Oh the cable ties -did- hold up! Alarmingly well in fact...

What happened was the screws are actually put in the wood sideways, along the grain so when Ysabelle hit it it split the wood along there, I just used that to hold it all in place still to stop it splitting any more and it worked out really nicely. Cable ties and duct taped the lot to stop it falling apart, like the professional engineer I am haha.