The Illawarra Cutters climbed back into the top eight with a convincing 38-18 victory over Manly at WIN Stadium on Saturday.

The Cutters welcomed back a host of NRL talent with Dylan Farrell, George Rose and Jake Marketo all logging some minutes on a bye weekend for the Dragons but it was the debut of Blake Wallace at halfback that proved key to the victory.

The Dapto junior, who's spent the past three seasons in the Queensland Cup, scored a try and booted six goals in the win showing he has plenty to offer the NSW Cup this year.

"I think everyone was pretty happy with Blake's debut for the Cutters," coach Scott Logan said.

"We've been a little bit inconsistent in a few areas we wanted to improve in and I thought Blake would fit in a little bit better for this week. He's been playing good footy in the local comp and we've had some really good feedback there.

He came in and scored a try and directed us around the field well and his kicking game was really good."

With the match against Manly nestled between two byes and coming off a last start-loss to Newtown, Logan said the win was a crucial one for his side.

"Going into this block we had Newtown, bye, Manly, bye and we were hoping to get eight points out of that scenario," he said.

"Against Newtown we'd had a few wins and had a week off and we had a decent squad. It was Russell [Packer's] first game and I think everyone looked around and thought 'someone else will do it today' and that wasn't the case. Everyone needs to put in every week in this competition to get results and we put a fair bit of heat on ourselves individually. Unfortunately we let that one slip, so this was a crucial game for us.

"Manly were quite poor, I've seen them play a lot better this year, but we were a lot better in our application this week."

The Cutters led 28-6 at half-time on the back of tries to Dylan Farrell, Drew Hutchison, Wallace, Charly Runciman and Justin Hunt.

Tyrone Cranston's 50th-minute effort opened their second-half account before Hunt's second blew the score out to 38-6 before the Sea Eagles hit back without looking likely to threaten the result.