CRYSTAL PALACE captain Mile Jedinak hailed the focus of Wilfried Zaha after the winger’s brace fired the Eagles into the Championship play-off final.

The second leg of their semi-final with bitter rivals Brighton was stuck at deadlock heading into the final quarter before Zaha nodded home Yannick Bolasie’s cross.

With the home side pushing for a leveller, Zaha sealed Palace’s place at Wembley two minutes from time with a rocket finish from 12-yards with his weaker left foot.

And afterwards Jedinak was full of praise for the club’s on-loan Manchester United wide-man, who has remained fully focused on events in south London despite the recent managerial news in Manchester.

“Even recently the manager who bought him has just retired, that could have been playing on the kid’s mind,” said the Australian.

“But Wilfried has been fully focused at this club, he doesn’t ever talk about Man Utd.

“We might joke around with him every so often, but the kid’s head is on. When it’s game time he is ready to roll.

“He is doing his part and enjoying the moment, and I don’t think I even have to say that because he revels in this sort of environment.

“I’m glad that we have got him for the next game because he has got a huge future ahead of him.

“He was working hard and tracking back today, that’s the sort of things that the regular people don’t see.

“Out there on the field, the hard work and the sweat that he puts in, you can’t replace that.”

Jedinak added: “It is sometimes more special than one of his tricks and it gets more noticed in the group.

“Wilfired is 100 per cent focused on us and tonight was obviously his night with the two goals.

“He doesn’t get too many goals with his head, Wilf has said that it was his first one.

“He has been told to get in behind his man at the back stick and he did that brilliantly today to score the first, and his second goal was finished superbly.

“Full credit to him, he had a fantastic game and full credit to the boys.”

The Eagles came into the tie as underdogs following a wretched end to the regulation season as prior to their final day win over Peterborough, the SE25 outfit had not won in nine matches.

But Jedinak believes Palace were able to use their underdog status against the Seagulls to execute their game plan.

He said: “We could sense that they were possibly a bit over confident, but look what happened in the end. We took that and used it as ammunition.

“I knew that whoever could keep their composure and calmness over the two legs would have been in the ascendancy.

“Although in the first half we weren’t at our best, we took a lot of momentum from the second period.

“We knew what type of arena that we were in and that it was a huge rivalry.

“And obviously it’s the result that we wanted but on top of that it was the performance that we wanted as well.

“We knew that we would have to stand up coming here, it is a one-sided crowd we all know that.

“I thought our fans were brilliant as well and I couldn’t have been more proud of the lads for the way that they stood up and were counted.”

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