The Wyong Roos have completely blown the Manly Sea Eagles off the park in a 58-14 demolition at Brookvale Oval.
It would be an injustice to single out a player for the Roos as 17 individuals were all on their game and gelled for a fantastic team performance, one of their best of the season so far.
The Sea Eagles were well and truly off their game, making constant uncharacteristic mistakes in attack, and having various defensive flaws exposed by the red-hot Roos throughout the entire 80-minutes.
The Roos got out to a perfect start, scoring two quick tries through Omar Slaimankhel and Chris Smith, and before the Sea Eagles’ players could blink, the score was 10-0.
Suddenly, with a stroke of luck, the Sea Eagles were back in only their second touch of the football in a whole eight minutes after Cameron Davis cleaned up a Wyong mistake and strolled over untouched.
The Sea Eagles dominated the field position for the next period of the match and looked to lock the scores up, but a 90 metres intercept from Omar Slaimankhel got them close, before Fabian Goodall got sent to the sin bin for not being square off the ensuing play.
Wyong took full advantage of the extra man, as Dominic Reardon threw an overhead pass to Chris Centrone, who went over untouched and increase their lead to 14-4.
Abraham Papalii was only on the field for a matter of minutes before he charged onto a ball after the Roos’ had travelled 100 metres from the kick-off set, and he proved to be too strong as he planted the ball down.
At 20-4, the Sea Eagles had to hang on until the half-time break, but Cornish exposed the tired defence by stepping off his right foot and scoring an easy try under the posts.
The Roos continued where they left off to start the second half, as a long left-to-right shift found the hands of Joseph Manu, who took on the line and wrestled his way through the defence to score.
Off the kick-off set, a bomb was put up by Cornish and it was allowed to bounce by Davis, who was looking into the sun, and the bounce favoured Slaimankhel who got a well deserved second try that extended the Roos’ lead to 36-4.
The score-line was getting ugly, but a lovely kick from Pita Godinet that was caught and planted by an airborne Davis, who made amends for his earlier mistake.
Nobody could stop a steamrolling Papalii as he bullied his way through the Manly defence to score his second try which allowed the Roos’ to hit the 40-point mark.
The red-hot Roos’ continued their run after Centrone made a break down the right sideline, and the ball eventually found it’s way to the other side of the field when Mitchell Frei put a grubber in for Slaimankhel to score another try.
The half-century was reached when Mitch Williams drew the defence, and created a gaping hole for Justin Toomey-White to cruise over the line.
Slaimankhel was taken out with under six minutes to go and a penalty was awarded, and the Manly defence could not hold out when Carne Doyle-Manga crashed over, and Feleti Mateo used his experience to score a consolation try to make the final score 58-14.