ROBB College will contest its first New England grand final in eight years after vanquishing college rivals St Albert’s in yesterday’s first knockout semi-final.
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Albies jumped out to an early 10-nil advantage but tries in the minutes either side of half-time saw Robb take the lead and they never looked back, grinding out a 17-10 win to book a berth in the decider against defending champions Armidale.
The Blues beat Barbarians in the second semi 45-22.
Barbarians scored first but the Blues replied with interest to lead 31-8 at the break, with John Roberts crossing for the first two of his hat-trick.
It was a big turnaround from their last encounter, which the Baa Baas won, and, as much as the win, Blues co-coach Alan Jones was happy with how they went about it.
“It was a well-constructed win,” he said.
“A combination of some good team play and a bit of individual brilliance.”
Roberts was the prime example of that.
He finished off some good team tries and scored some good individual tries.
Jones said they started really well.
“We were bending their defensive line,” he said.
They probably got a bit over -confident and, after a kicking error, Baa Baas struck through Dom Bower.
It didn’t seem to rattle them though and they quickly found their structure, and “exhibited a bit of patience for once”.
They particularly made some inroads through the Baa Baas’ 12/13 channel.
“We ran some of our big blokes there and were getting offloads away,” Jones said.
He thought the forward pack on the whole was really good.
“The whole forward pack really performed well and that gave us the platform,” he said.
Barbarians co-coach Sam Piddington said the Blues were too good for them, although they didn’t help themselves by falling off too many tackles.
“We just missed a few tackles in the first half in the centre channel and they got some good offloads,” he said.
It was exactly what he’d said they couldn’t afford to do.
He thought they were still in it at half-time.
“We put a lot of pressure on them in the first 10 of the second half.
“But their defence held well,” he said.
It was the little things they just didn’t quite execute.
“We had some good go-forward and looked good out wide,” Piddington said.
But just passes went astray and things like that.
Sam Noakes and Chris Heywood were two of their better performers but they all tried hard, he said.