by Paul Cook –

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THE WARM-UP:
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The clash that all neutral – and some parochial – club rugby fans had been waiting for. The two remaining unbeaten sides in the Shute Shield facing off in what many predict as a Grand Final rehearsal. The best attacking side in the competition versus the best defence and match-ups to savour all across the park, including two captains, one old and one new, ready to do battle at openside. The Marlins came in off the back of a demolition job on Randwick, while the Woodies had seen off a gallant Sydney University in the match of the season. Something had to give.

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THE BREAKDOWN:
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It was the reigning Premiers that held sway for the opening quarter, camped out in the Manly 22 but unable to break their stout rearguard. With only a couple of Ben Batger penalties to show for their efforts, they went in search of a decisive 7pt blow but just as they looked set to finally prise open a gap, a crucial pass rebounded off the head of their hooker Todd Pearce instead, Manly scooped up the loose pill and went through the hands for the length of the field, Reece Hodge finishing under the posts.

That was enough to unleash the Marlins from their shackles, Kotoni Ale adding a second within five minutes as the home side warmed to the task. The ever dangerous John Grant did find a way to the chalk in the shadows of half-time and with Dave Porecki sent to the bin, momentum appeared to have swung back to the visitors. But one scratchy restart later and a Matt Lucas surge ended with Chris Yarrington crossing to give Manly a 19-11 lead at the break.

A Hodge penalty in the opening minute of the second forty maintained the pressure and as Eastwood began to chase the scoreboard, the Marlins picked them off when the opportunities arose. Dave Porecki and replacement, Mitchell Daniel, added two more before the ever dangerous Grant grabbed a consolation second with five to go. But there was still time for a last hurrah, BJ Hartmann scooping up a loose pass in the final minute to run home and rubber stamp an emphatic victory.

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THE WASH-UP:
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“We’ve talked about having confidence in our ability and just doing the simple things well and know that it’s going to work out for us and I guess that first 15 minutes was an example of keeping our heads down, keep working away and knowing it was going to come,” towering Manly lock Ed Gower told Rugby News at full-time.

“We know that if we get our stuff together, we can really get the job done. Obviously, we weren’t getting it together at the beginning, but when we did, things fell into place, the cogs started turning and we built from there.

“I don’t think we could have ever expected to get 40pts today,” he continued. “We knew it was going to be tough and it was, but sometimes you can expect that and still not rise to the occasion. Today, as a team, we did that probably better than we have at any time since I joined the club.”

Ed Gower was a dominant presence around the park for the Marlins – Photo: Adam MacDonald

Coach Damien Cummins was just as ebullient. “I honestly never thought we were going to lose, even through the week. You can gauge the performances on the weeks that you have leading up to a game – the attitude at training and how they train, and we had a pretty relaxed week. I was pretty confident that they would get the job done today and they did.”

But while the Marlins can quite rightly celebrate a well deserved victory, the devil, as always, is in the detail. And while Cummins’ opposite number, John Manenti, took nothing away from the Marlins’ efforts, he did feel that the scoreboard wasn’t wholly reflective of his side’s performance, just an affirmation of one too many costly errors and a dash of misfortune.

“If that pass doesn’t hit Toddy Pearce’s melon, maybe, maybe we’re sitting here having a different discussion because if we’d scored instead and gone 13-0 up, the pressure goes on them and things change a bit,” he said. “That was still a long way out from the final whistle but I think if we’d scored at that point, we would have been commanding the game. It felt like we had the ascendancy but that try just gave them a little bit of spirit.

“I felt we were playing alright, we’d made a lot of line breaks that weren’t finished off and I also felt they hadn’t had too much of a run on the game so to be three tries to one down at half-time was certainly disappointing. To be fair to Manly, they well and truly deserved the victory, things weren’t going their way in that first half but they found a way to be ahead at half-time and that’s a sign of a good team.”

His captain, Hugh Perrett, could only affirm his coaches’ assessment. As skipper of a side known for their high levels of consistency over the last five years, he was understandably frustrated at the disparity on the scoreboard and his side’s unwitting accessory to the crime.

“We started well, we were on the front foot and attacking their end and we just needed to maintain the rage but the intercept try against the run of play changed the momentum right there,” he said.

“I also think the manner of the second try was disappointing. We gave away penalty after penalty, which got them 10 metres out from our line and they rumbled over. And then with a minute to go until the break and a man advantage we couldn’t close out the half. We spill the ball from the kick-off and gift them a try down the blindside so the manner in which we gave them tries and gave them points was really disappointing.

“It’s not something we can’t fix up so there are some positives there but if you’re coming first on the ladder, you don’t want to concede 40pts in a game of footy, defence has got to be better than that.”

Daniel Alley and Hugh Perrett compete for possession in the engine room – Photo: Adam MacDonald

Cummins agreed that his side had been on the backfoot for the opening quarter but didn’t put that down to any big-match wobbles on their part, it was more a case of hanging in there against one of the best sides in the business when they were in control, before coming out the other side to claim the spoils.

“Maybe we were a bit nervy at the start but I think we just didn’t have any ball,” he observed. “Right from the kick-off they got a penalty, they got down our end and pounded our line for a long time but our defence has been really, really good and today was no different. To have no ball against the reigning Premiers for that long and only concede two penalties was great and I thought we shut them down in certain areas really well.

“When you’re defending for long periods and chasing shadows it’s hard to get into the game. Once we did get the ball and spent a bit of time with it, then we got some confidence. That try was what we needed and it definitely hurt them at the same time, it changed the momentum.

“It was a hard grind in the first half, we ran into the wind but I thought we played well, aside from a few individual errors. We were down to 14 men before the break when Porecki went to the bin but we didn’t go into our shell, we kept attacking and at half-time, there was no tactical stuff that we needed to do better. I didn’t write down any notes from the first half, it was just about them having the pure emotion and pure desire to want to win.”

Which they clearly did, another three tries in the second half cementing the victory and despite a late rally from the visitors, Manenti and Perrett conceded that it simply wasn’t their day.

“Once they got ahead, we tried to find another gear late in the game but to be honest, the game was gone and they’d probably switched off a bit so I don’t read too much into the last quarter,” said the coach. “I’ve got no doubt that we can play a lot better than we are but I’m sure Manly think they can play a lot better too so I’m not going to read too much into that either.

“They are a good side, they rumble away at you in the forwards and they’ve got some big human beings so it was a good test for us. I won’t say it was a fail but it certainly wasn’t top of the class from us today so we just go away and start again. We’ve got a lot to learn but we’ll keep working, pick ourselves up off the canvas and go again. But, you don’t need to be peaking at this time of year.”

“They’re a good side so credit to them. It’s all about momentum and they just won the key aspects of the game and even when we did have it, we gave up turnovers,” said Perrett. “It’s about converting pressure or opportunities into points and they did that really well today. It was always going to be an interesting clash and I think they just executed better and played smarter than us.”

Manly skipper Kotoni Ale dives in for the Marlins’ second – Photo: Adam MacDonald

But while we should rightly revel in a great performance from a team playing some darn good footy right now, we should also take a cautious look at the history books. What they tell us is that Manly did pretty much the same thing to Eastwood this time last year on their way to the Minor Premiership. But when it came to the big dance, the Marlins were once again conspicuous by their absence.

It is a fact that has not been lost on the current squad.

“What we’ve got at the moment is something we’ve been building towards for quite a few years,” says Ed Gower. “We’re really happy with how it turned out today but we’ve been in this situation before and still haven’t made the Grand Final so there is definitely an element of ‘This was good but it doesn’t meant all that much yet in terms of the bigger picture,’”

Asked to look into his crystal ball and predict that we had just witnessed this year’s Grand finalists going toe-to-toe, a relaxed Damien Cummins played a suitably straight bat.

“I don’t know, hopefully we’re one,” he smiled. “I’m not too fussed who else gets there as long as we’re there.”

Maintain their current standards and that would seem to be a given.

Manly 41 (Reece Hodge, Kotoni Ale, Chris Yarrington, Dave Porecki, Mitchell Daniel, BJ Hartmann tries; Reece Hodge 4 cons, pen) defeated Eastwood 18 (John Grant 2 tries; Ben Batger con, 2 pens)