Manly hand the Wests Tigers an end of season shellacking

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Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles v Wests Tigers

The Sea Eagles show lots of pride in their jersey by handing the Wests Tigers their second-biggest loss of the season with a 54-12 win.

The Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles came out firing, with fullback Tolutau Koula going over for the first four-pointer of the game in the first minute. It looked like they were going to go back-to-back through Brad Parker, however, a dropped ball saw the Wests Tigers get their first proper use of the ball in the fifth minute. Not long after, Wests Tigers captain, Api Koroisau, got the Wests Tigers on the board after a Manly knock-on. Scores were squared at 6 a piece after Api converted his own try.

After some solid end-to-end footy, Manly was the next to score with Koula getting his double in the 19th minute thanks to a linebreak and quick play the ball from the youngest Trbojevic brother. DCE was able to convert his second to give the Sea Eagles a 12 - 6 lead. 

Some messy attack and poor ball handling saw not much happen until the Sea Eagles eventually extended their lead through winger, Jason Saab, who ran in two tries in two minutes. This pushed Manly out by 14 points with 7 minutes left of the first half, but they weren't finished with adding to the scoreboard before the break. In the 40th minute, Ethan Bullemor, crossed for his first try of the 2023 season, getting him off the nudie run at the last minute! 

Manly started the second half almost as good as the first, however, Jakob Arthur bounced the ball. It didn't take long though before Manly were the first to score through Haumole Olakau'atu - who had been in everything up until this point, except for bagging his own four-pointer. Although he was surrounded by Wests Tigers jerseys, it didn't look like he had to work too hard to get the ball down over the line - showing how poor the Tigers' defence was up to this point in the game. 

Between the 57th and 67th minutes of the game, Manly ran in four unanswered tries, just completely toying with the Wests Tigers side. The first over the line was Milestone Man, Jake Trbojevic, who was gifted a try by his captain. Five minutes later, winger Ray Tuaimalo-Vaega scored his first for the night before crowd favourite, Gordon Chan Kum Tong, added his name to the scoresheet with another gifted try, this time from Saab. The Manly captain decided he wasn't going to end the night without his own try, considering he'd given one to Jurbo, and crossed in the 67th minute to blow out the score to 54 - 6.

It was beginning to look like the Tigers weren't going to get much more of the ball before the final whistle as Manly were just throwing it around for fun, but by some miracle, Asu Kepaoa was able to get the ball down at the end of an acrobatic jump and King Koroisau absolutely NAILED the sideline conversion. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite enough and the Tigers just couldn't get the 42 points they needed in the last 90 seconds! 

The 2023 season is now over for both sides, with neither making the top 8.