It was a game of two halves with Inverell feeding off Pirates errors and ill discipline to lead 13-3 at the break.

But the home side switched into gear in the second, running in 35 unanswered points to get home 38-13.

The Highlanders saw Saturday as their last crack at making the top five and started accordingly with an early long-range penalty to Luke Lawler giving them a 3-nil lead after three minutes.

Pirates almost hit straight back but were ruled to have knocked on over the line.

They did level a few minutes later, but not for long with Lawler nailing his second, this time from about 45m out.

Michael Schneider then finished off a brilliant 50m effort to extend the lead to 10 quarter of an hour before the break.

Fullback Dylan Lewis instigated the attack, fielding a kick from Jake Hartmann and sensing an opportunity sending a long pass out to the right where Inverell had too much pace for the stretched Pirates defence.

Compounding Pirates problems Bart Leach was yellow carded for a late hit on Lewis. They managed to chew up the first four minutes of that camped on their line but the Highlanders repelled their advances.

Not long after they were down to 14 with Luke Fenton binned for repeated team infringements but held out to lead by 10 at the break.

Pirates’ error count was again well up in double figures and frustrated them as much as coach Andrew Verrell.

“Some of the stuff we did in the first half was fine,” Verrell said.

“We penetrated, we had intent.

“They were just impatient.”

Inverell also did defend well, he said.

The message at half-time was, among the obvious, to keep doing what they were doing.

“Structurally the way we played in the second half was no different to the first half,” Verrell said.

The injection of some old heads helped. They added some directness to their play.

Jake Douglas also imposed himself more, and the scrum really started to assert its dominance.

The result was they completely controlled the second half.

It started in the first minute with Douglas bursting through the ruck and finding himself in open space before linking up with number eight Sam Collins.

Collins added to his tally a couple of minutes later kicking his second penalty to close the gap to two.

Brother Tim then put them in front with just over 10 gone. Again it was some Douglas magic that provided the spark with the Country centre slipping through the first line of defence to get them on the front foot. (Sam) Collins stretched the lead to six with 26 to go and Pirates never looked like being beaten from there.

Highlanders coach Scott Bremner wasn’t disappointed in the effort but they just couldn’t get their hands on the ball in the second half.

“The first half I was very happy. We played to our game plan and played to our strengths,” he said.

“But full credit to Pirates they just moved their point of attack one play wider of our pillar and post and created holes.”