WERRIS Creek will have the chance to atone for last year’s grand final disappointment after booking a home Group 4 Second Division Shield grand final with a 38-24 win over Uralla on Sunday.
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The minor premiers set the win up in the first half with a double to centre Brett Thomas, and tries from Nathaniel Slater and Zac Leonard helping them to a 20-12 lead with under 10 to play in the first half. Cody Tickle extended that to 26-12 when he ducked out of dummy half, and converted, with two minutes to go.
“We played some good football there in the first half,” Magpies coach Linsday Bowne said.
“We had a couple of players taking the ball forward for us and the boys converted half opportunities into points.”
Second rower Jack Prior pushed the Magpies further ahead within the first few minutes of the second half.
Minutes later Slater looked in for his second after the Magpies found a bit of space on the left, but the Tigers cover defence managed to bring him down metres from the line.
They did get their seventh not long after, with fullback Zac Darcy slipping through to, with the conversion make it 38-12 with about 20 to go.
They dropped off a bit after that with the Tigers getting what Bowne thought were a couple of soft tries on them, but he was overall happy with the effort.
They got the win, which was the main thing.
“We knew we were in for a tough game,” Bowne said.
“We had a really good platform laid by the forwards and when we had opportunities to go wide we took them.”
He said there were a lot of good performances, singling out Thomas Brown, Thomas, Prior and Leonard as a few of their best, and was particularly pleased with the effort of the players off the bench.
“The good thing is they all got in the sheds afterwards and said we can play a lot better than that,” he said.
“A lot of the blokes have got last year in the back of their minds.”
After upsetting Kootingal in the major semi-final they squandered a 22-nil lead to lose the grand final.
Tigers president Carl Press said they just made too many mistakes, and lost the ruck battle.
“They just controlled the ruck. In the back end of the game we started to shut it down,” he said.
But for most of the game they couldn't slow down the Magpies momentum and roll-on through the ruck.
They will though take a lot of positives from the way they finished.
They finished the stronger and had the Magpies bogged down in their half for a while there in the second half.
Jason Ketley was good in the second row and made a lot of strong charges.
Kelcie Davis also had a strong game out in the centres.
Manilla meanwhile upset minor premiers Walcha in the Plate major semi-final beating them 40-30.
