Orange City junior James Donato set a 'cheeky' goal to score a try during Eastern Suburbs' trip to Wade Park as his troops were red hot favourites to take out the struggling Western Sydney Two Blues on Saturday afternoon.
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His whole family made the trip to Orange's premiere sporting ground and would have erupted when the 23-year-old crashed over in the 27th minute.
The try was one of eight five-pointers put on the board by Easts as they took out their rivals witj a 50-8 belting.
But, let's focus on Donato's try... because it was a beauty.
Eastern Suburbs had a line-out just five metres away from the opposition's try-line, and when Sione Fifita plucked the ball out of the air, he dumped it off to a barnstorming Donato who was running back through the line-out formation.
The flanker still had plenty of work to do when he got the ball, but it was sheer strength and power than saw him crash over the line.
That moment was one of many highlights the now sixth-placed side treated fans to, as winger Blake Rixon put forward his bid for man-of-the-match honours with four tries.
But, it wasn't all doom and gloom for the Two Blues as they held a 3-0 lead until the 22nd minute.
Rixon's first breakthrough opened the floodgates as the points would come hard and fast from then on in.
"They're a great side and even though they've had a couple of losses, they're a great, fast-starting side," Donato said.
"Credit to them. They came out and probably had the better of us in the first 20 minutes, I think errors really let us down in that first 20."
The side's three tries came off the set piece, something Donato drew satisfaction from.
"We like to play off the set piece and we do a lot of training for that. I don't think Pauli would be happy if we couldn't score off that," he said.
Before big Donato returned to the sheds, he spoke about that special moment in the 27th minute.
"It was a cheeky goal, I had it in my mind," he laughed.
"It was good to get the meat pie. My Mum and Dad are here, my grandparents are here, they don't get to watch often."
Two Blues' coach Joel Rivers was disappointed about how the contest unfolded, but has a fairly clear understanding of what needs to improve moving forward.
"I think they executed the game-plan in the first 15 minutes, and that showed when we pinned Easts in their own half," Rivers said.
"But, for whatever reason, they decided to go away from that. We dropped off our tackles, didn't cover our inside man defensively and they just started running through.
"I thought the scrums were a mess. To be honest, I think there were guesses made about who's penalty was where and what was going on, but you've just got to get on with it."
So many coaches have a hard time getting the best out of their staff for a full 80 minutes, and Rivers had a crack at explaining what needs to be done.
"Every team's going to be tired in the second-half," he said.
"You would expect the players to be a little bit fatigued but I think it's that resilience to continue with a game-plan and see it through.
"If the options we take don't work the first time, we know they work because we've done them before. The first 15 minutes were very different to the rest of the game."
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