Underwood has come off the bench to replace Peter Moodie whom North Tamworth coach Matt Munro said yesterday would be out of action indefinitely with a hernia injury.

Underwood is well known by Munro.

“Corey’s been going out with my sister since high school,” Munro said.

“He had six years with Manly and played a bit of first grade.

“He had a year with Wagga but took last year off to do a bit of backpacking so hasn’t played for a couple of seasons.”

The Bear prop also teamed up with fellow front-rower Peter Driscoll and Munro in the NSW Country team in 1999.

Underwood is another of the Bear steamroller forwards, so effective under the unlimited interchange rules.

“He’s going to give us a heap of go forward. He’s more a yardage front rower than anything,” Munro said.

Munro said there were “no major problems” with his team’s 26-6 win over Ourimbah last week.

He said the defence around the rucks was solid and to the Bears’ credit they allowed just one try in during the match and kept Ourimbah scoreless in the second half.

“I thought our young players Brock Hunter, Mark McCauley and Jamie Trindall went well,” Munro said.

“And the play of our halves (Gavin Galvin and Brendan Magnus) was excellent considering they’d only met each other on Friday night.”

Munro was keen however for his side to fine-tune a couple of areas.

“It got a bit scrappy as the match went on and our fitness deteriorated a bit,” he said.

“Ourimbah bombed about four chances so we’ll be looking to not give Narrabri those opportunities to score.”