Manly Marlins exorcise their demons in beating Eastwood

THE Manly Marlins exorcised their demons as they won their 10th straight game beating Eastwood 42-22 at Manly Oval on Saturday.

Shute Shield rugby game Manly v Eastwood at Manly Oval.

THE Manly Marlins exorcised their demons as they won their 10th straight game beating Eastwood 42-22 at Manly Oval on Saturday.

The players had been haunted by their 55-24 thrashing by the Woodies in last year’s preliminary final and Saturday was the chance for them to become “ghostbusters.”

“It does sit in the back of your mind, you always remember those bad defeats,” said secondrower Dylan Sigg, who played his 100th first grade game on the weekend.

“We just wanted to prove that we were much better than that and we definitely did that.

http://www.manly2015.com.au/Manly2015/?utm_source=MD%20Ticker&utm_medium=MD%20Ticker&utm_campaign=Manly2015MDTicker080314

“It’s a huge monkey off our back

‘And that will leave something in the back of their minds for when it comes to the finals.”

Centre Brian Sefanaia was delighted to have extracted revenge following last season’s debacle.

“It was talked about a lot ... just the embarrassment we felt,” Sefanaia said..

Manly centre Brian Sefanaia caught by the Eastwood defence. .

”The game haunted me and the boys all summer. It was good to be able to work on what went wrong that day and get the upper-hand here.”

The undefeated Marlins are now six points clear on top of the ladder, picking up bonus points nine of their 10 games.

Halfback Mark Swanepoel was a standout and coach Phil Blake said prop Mitch Lewis was getting better every game.

Backrower Harry Bergelin scored another two tries, taking his season tally to 13.

“On the whole I thought it was a pretty dominant performance,” Blake said.

“I don’t think five tries to four was a true reflection of the game.”

But he said the team is going through lulls and the 10 minutes after halftime was a poor as they have played this year.

“We just have to eradicate that as quickly as we can,” Blake said.