It was their sixth win over their student counterparts this season and, most important, earned them a place in the grand final.

They haven’t been there since 2006 when, coincidently,  they went down to Albies.

This time they’ll be taking on defending champions Armidale who accounted for Barbarians 45-22 in the other semi-final.

The student derby was first-up and saw Albies jump out to an early 10-point advantage. 

“It was a tough game. They came out all guns blazing,” Robb co-coach Jim Boland said.

“They got to 10-nil very quickly.”

Things weren’t quite working for Robb.

“They took five tight heads in the first half and we turned the ball over 21 times,” Boland said.

“To the boys’ credit, they stuck at it.”

They got their reward right on half-time, with skipper Tom Kent scoring a good try.

David James missed the conversion from  in front but redeemed himself minutes into the second half, swooping on an Albies mistake and racing away 50m to score and give Robb the lead for the first time in the game.

From there they “smothered” Albies, Boland said.

“We just ground it out,” he said.

“We basically suffocated them. We didn’t give them any ball.”

The first half they were a bit guilty of trying to score off the first phase.

“We probably had 75 per cent of the ball in the second half,” Boland said.

That meant when Albies did get the ball, they had no petrol because of the amount of tackling they’d had to do.

After five-eighth Lachie Fletcher had scored to extend their lead to 17-10, Albies had a close call to get back level or at least bridge the gap.

But the try was disallowed for interference before the quick throw was taken.

Boland wasn’t too worried though. He felt they had control of the game.

Two of the things that stood out for him was the way they didn’t drop their heads when they messed up, and worked as a team.

“It was an outstanding team effort,” he said.

As such, there were candidates across the park for the points.

Breakaway Cedric Fadel got the three and Fletcher the two, with Will Archer and Hamish Dickson sharing the one.

For Albies, it was an all too familiar story.

They didn’t execute well enough.

“The boys tried really hard but our error rate was too high,” Albies coach Tom Newsome said.

“We kept giving the ball back to them on second or third phase.

“It meant we tackled for probably 65 of the 80 minutes.”

They did have a couple of things go against them, he said, the disallowed try for one, but were really their own worst enemies.

Two of Robb’s tries came against the run of play.

The scrum was the strong feature for them and Newsome couldn’t go past the front row of Will Carrigan, Charlie French and Joe Druce as  their best.

Half-back Matt Houlahan was also good in his last game for Albies, while Alex Pay was good at inside centre.