Magpies flying finish buries Gunnedah

Clinging to a seven point lead with under 15 minutes remaining, the Magpies ran in three unanswered tries to swoop to a 43-17 win.

“We’re really happy and really pleased with the way the boys finished off,” Magpies co-coach Mark Daley said.

“They got caught up in a bit of rubbish there for a while.”

The Magpies showed good intent early and were rewarded with a penalty to Pat Strong about five minutes in.

Gunnedah hit straight back through the boot of Shane Lutze, but the Magpies returned the favour with outside centre Ben Coombes capitalising on a stretched Red Devils defence.

The game was halted for about 20 minutes a few minutes later as medics attended to Gunnedah second rower David Campbell.

Concerned about a neck injury, and as a precaution, the ambulance was called for. Not long after the resumption Magpies prop Rory Marshmann, seagulling out on the right wing, scored to extend their lead.

A few minutes later, Strong applied the finishing touch to a 70m raid and the conversion pushed the Magpies out to a 24-3 lead.

They looked well on top at that point with the Red Devils fumbling any opportunities they created.

Eventually they managed to turn one into points with outside centre Josh Carter steaming through.

Right on half-time they closed the gap further, five-eighth Jamie Mitchell taking the ball to the line and drawing the defence in, before turning the ball inside to Jeremy Brown.

Lutze added the extras to make it 24-17 at the break.

It stayed that way until around 12 to go when Magpies winger Lachie McIntosh finished off a well-worked scrum move with number eight Al Doyle taking the ball off the back and linking up with half-back Matt Blanch, who had peeled around.

He then found Strong chiming in from fullback. It forced the Gunnedah winger to come in, and Strong held the ball up perfectly for McIntosh to have a clear run to the line.

It effectively sealed for them what was a tough win.

Daley thought their first 10-15 minutes was “fantastic”. The last 10-15 was similarly good.

“They’re slowly starting to get there,” he said.

“Some of the support play was good and it was a much better effort than the last two games.”

They were again bullied at the breakdown a bit which led to slow ball or turnovers.

“We were at the breakdown but we probably weren’t effective,” he said.

They’d spoken beforehand about needing to clean out the threat but were guilty of standing there and getting pushed off.

It was for the Red Devils one of the more pleasing areas of their game.

“We were in there,” coach Jason Waera said.

“Silly little errors at critical times really let the pressure off them.”