Baird said the plan was to slow the Nomads down and keep the ball out of their hands, and for the majority of the first two quarters he thought that worked.

“When it came to the burst they piled on six goals and that’s where the game was really lost to us. We went from being two goals up to four goals down in the blink of an eye. We just couldn’t recover from that,” Baird said.

“They’re a very good football side now, they’re good right across the park.”

The result came from only three quarters of football, as the game was called off following an off-the-ball incident that saw the Saints Darren Pithers knocked to the ground unconscious.

The incident sparked an all-in brawl involving players, officials and spectators. Pithers was eventually taken to Armidale hospital with a suspected broken jaw by an ambulance that took about half an hour to arrive at the field.

Officials were obliged to call the match off because the delay in play exceeded half an hour.

“We’re there to play footy and not for any other reason, so it was certainly not a good way to finish the year, put it that way,” Baird said.

Pithers was released from hospital on Sunday morning.