Liddle Steals The Show For Wests

An incredibly dominant period in the second half is what won the game for the Magpies, who scored 22 unanswered points off the back of some Liddle brilliance. 

Wests were first on the board thanks to Liddle as he made a saw an opportunity from dummy half, made a line-break and gave the ball to a supporting Pita Godinet, who strolled over under the posts.

Tom Wright then began to inject himself into the content when he took the ball to the line with some fancy footwork and put a teammate into a gap, and eventually, the ball found its way into the hands of John Folau who ran away and scored. 

A show and go from Wright led to the next points for Blacktown, as his blinding speed saw him break through the defence and link up with Lewis Brown, who eventually passed to Jono Wright who scored the third long-range try of the half. 

The long-range theme continued to begin the second half and it was Jono Wright setting up Tom this time as the former took an intercept from deep into his own half, passed to his five-eighth who once again showed ridiculous speed to go the length.

18-6 down and Tom Wright on fire it looked as though the Sea Eagles were going to go on with it, but the Magpies suddenly turned it on.

The halves linked up in sloppy yet effective fashion as Tyson Gamble put a nice grubber into the in-goal, and Godinet dived on top of it and grounded it with his chest to score his second try of the afternoon. 

Liddle had a go from dummy half when the Magpies were next on the attack and was pulled down short by the Blacktown defence before Gamble decided to do the exact same thing from dummy half and grounded the ball to lock the scores up at 18-all. Gamble unfortunately got injured in the tackle and struggled to play for the remainder of the game.

Some poor defence from Blacktown gave Wests the lead as the markers got mixed up while defending their line, and Liddle was able to pick the ball up and stroll through a yawning gap untouched. 

Liddle was tearing the Sea Eagles apart as another run from dummy half had the defence backtracking as he was tackled, and Malakai Watene-Zelezniak crashed over on the next play in his return game for the Magpies.

In a game where the theme was long-range tries, it couldn’t get longer for Harry O’Toole who picked up a Tom Wright kick from inside his in-goal and went the length of the field to score a 100-plus metre try.

To marginally stay in the contest with minutes remaining, Blacktown scored two tries through Vai Toutai and John Folau on opposite wings, but it would be the Magpies to walk away with the two points.