Facing the sudden-death clash without Brad Purtell and Luke Thompson after the pair were ruled out for the season, the Greens were forced to test their depth against the hungry Mallee Men.

But despite their patched up side, the Greens cut out the mistakes that riddled their performance the week before against Yenda and showed desperation in defence to keep their premiership hopes alive.

Purtell raved about his side's performance saying it was a complete turnaround from the nightmare performance the previous week.

"It was touch and go until half-time, but our defence was awesome, there were a couple of try-saving tackles from Dean Pauling and Timmy Delguzzo," Purtell said.

"The boys showed desperation and that's what I said to them afterwards, to win finals games you need to show desperation.

"We were desperate for a win, and after last week's performance it was 100 per cent better this week."

The loss spells the end of West Wyalong's season, that will be classified as so close yet so far after at times performing well enough to beat the side's that remain in the title race.

Leeton held the narrow lead going into the break on Saturday up 22-16, but West Wyalong had little answer as the visitors turned on the fireworks to storm away with the win.

"In the second-half we stuck to our game plan and cut the mistakes out, we were still a little bit ill-disciplined, but the boys really tuned it on and it was a good win to be a part of," Purtell said.

Fullback Andrew Preston continued his excellent late-season form for West Wyalong to form a potent combination with representative centre Willy Jones with the pair crossing for tries.

Delguzzo and hooker Andrew Smith both bagged doubles for Leeton along with Brent Pike, who shrugged off the pain of two fractured bones in his hand to also cross and be one of his side's best performers.

Purtell said Pike handled the extra responsibility of being stand-in captain well, and subject to fitness, will have the captaincy next to his name for the rest of the season.

Amazingly, despite tearing a bicep off the bone the week before, Thompson actually played on Saturday but suffered a medial ligament knee injury in the first hit-up of the game.

"He's getting it (bicep) operated on Monday (today) so he came to us on Friday and said he'd be playing thinking he couldn't do any more damage to it," Purtell said.