The Rams looked like they’d defended their way to the silverware when they held Pirates’ maul up to earn a turnover deep in their half.

But Pirates won the ball back and were then awarded a penalty about 60m out.

Another advanced them to half-way. The Rams were ruled offside from the quick tap, edging Pirates closer again.

An overhead offload from Bo Abra in the tackle then created a bit of space on the outside and Devine did the rest to secure back to back titles for Pirates for the second time in eight years.

“Exhausted”, was Pirates coach Stuart Prowse’s initial response.

He thought it might have slipped away from them.

“I must admit those last 30 seconds I was wondering, but I was weirdly calm,” Prowse said.

He’s had a bit of practice at nail-biting finishes this year.

“They’ve won it in the last seconds before,” he said.

It was just a matter of keeping ball in hand.

“There was a lot of passion in the boys,” Prowse said.

“One of the boys’ pops died this morning. They wanted to do it for him.” 

“To be honest, I never expected it to be an easy game.” 

They had had to do some reshuffling, with half-back Jessie Caccianiga injured playing oztag on the Wednesday night.

“That upset what we were going to do in the halves,” he said.

“It was probably one of the worst games we played all year, except for the last five.” 

“We made some silly mistakes,” he said.

“We pushed a bit too hard at times and were a little bit slow around the breakdown.” 

The Rams were good there and were able to stifle their flow.

“The last minute we dug deep and showed good composure,” Prowse said.

It was a see-sawing game.

Micah Scarth kicked Pirates’ first points just a few minutes in but the Rams hit the front a few minutes later, with five-eighth and player of the grand final, Connor Size, scoring the first of his two tries.

Pirates replied through Nick McCrohan after being camped in Barraba’s 22 for about five minutes to make it 10-7 at the break.

Fullback Brad Swain hit back for the Rams but, after another extended period on Barraba’s line, Pirates centre Stuart Honeysett reached out on his back and planted the ball down to put them ahead 15-14 with 19 to go.

The Rams answered straight back through Size to push out to six ahead.

They held that until just over six to go when  Harrison Tibbles got over in the corner for Pirates.

Scarth couldn’t add the extras from the sideline though, leaving the Rams clinging to a 21-20 lead before Devine’s try made it 25-21 to Pirates.

The Rams were understandably devastated.

They defended superbly, and had to do a lot of it, and played as well as they had all season, coach Nick Fahey said.

“We were the most patient we’ve been and the best we’ve been at the breakdown  holding our own ball,” Fahey said.

The problems were when they didn’t have the ball.

“When we were defending we didn’t take enough of our opportunities,” Fahey said.

“When it counted I don’t think we came up with the ball we needed to.” 

They didn’t have a lot of ball to operate with and, while they were able to hold Pirates out, they could never quite get out of danger.

“The start of the second half we did exactly what we wanted to. We stuck to our game plan,” Fahey said.

“We were just patient and able to build enough pressure at the end.” 

He said Size was phenomenal. Duncan Woods also made a good impact off the bench and the front row were great.

It was the most complete game they (front row) had played. The scrum was strong and at one stage they had five carries in a row to make 50m.

For the victors, Nick Sorensen led a strong tight five effort. McCrohan was also good at the back of the scrum.