INVERELL Hawks won through to the grand final to be held in Moree against the Moree Boomerangs next Saturday, after taking out the Glen Innes Magpies on the weekend.
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The weekend’s battle of the birds saw the Magpies hit the Hawks with a big scare in a game that went right down to the wire. For the Hawks it came down to their dogged defence rather than any colourful display of attack.
“It was another solid game. Glen would have had 70 per cent of possession and field position throughout the whole 80 minutes,” Hawks president Garry Lavender said.
“They just kept testing our line and full credit to the boys, the defence held up.”
The first-half was a see-sawing affair and the Hawks took a 6-0 lead early on. The Magpies scored to lead 10-6 before the Hawks struck back to take it to 12-10. Both sides scored during the last five minutes of the first-half leaving the half-time score of 16-16.
“We came out in the second half and once again Glen just kept hammering our line.
“They got a penalty and that was the only two points they end up scoring in the second half,” Lavender said.
“We cover defence at every training session and to the boys’ credit they just hung in there and kept tackling and tackling.”
For 20 minutes both sides hammered each other.
“Harold Duncan scored a good individual try and put us back in the race,” Lavender said.
Duncan ran 80 metres to score that try and the scoreboard ticked over to 20-18 in favour of the Hawks. When he crossed the line again with just five minutes on the clock it was all over.
Lavender hopes his club will be in a similar situation this weekend after the grand final, when the Hawks defence will again need to be their strength.
“We’ll just give it our best shot. All you can do is go down with an open mind and just believe in yourself,” Lavender said.
“We’ll be underdogs, obviously, but I think we’ll give them a good go.”
The Moree Boomerangs will go into this game as favourites. The Hawks have not beaten them this season, along with a lot of other teams.
However Lavender remained positive and said they only have to beat the Moree side once, and this weekend would be the best time to do that.