After a successful regular season, the Inverell Highlanders under-16s rugby team are just one win away from tasting premiership glory.
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Inverell will take on Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School in the North West Regional Youth Competition under-16s grand final at Tamworth's Scully Park on Friday night.
"The boys have played really well this year," Inverell coach Andrew Walsh said.
"They've competed at a reasonable level against bigger clubs like Narrabri and schools like Calrossy and Farrer."
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Up against eight other teams across the region, Walsh said he was really happy with the team's success so far.
With a large number of the players involved in multiple sports, Walsh believes that has been a big advantage.
"They can adapt to whatever game is in front of them, so their talent is pretty good," he said.
"They have a lot of skills that are transferable across different codes and their desire to play as much footy as they can whether it's league, union, or AFL."
He also believes that teamwork and strong comradery among the playing group has played a major role.
"They're all a bunch of mates. They all hang out with each other. They're from multiple different schools, so it's not just one school in particular," he said.
"It's a good, broad cross section of kids."
Walsh knows Farrer present a formidable task, but doesn't completely know what to expect, given they didn't have a chance to play each other in the regular season.
"They forfeited because they had a tummy bug go through their boarding house," he said.
Still, he expects it to be a "cracker of a game" given their results against the same teams have been very similar.
Given most of Farrer's team are boarders, they have the opportunity to train a lot together.
"We'll be very wary of their highly drilled team in certain areas around the ruck and tackle," Walsh said.
"They will be competing for the ball at every given chance and that's very much a rugby dominated skill to have."
Walsh has still got confidence that his side can get the job done.
"If they keep playing their hybrid game of football, halfway between league and union because that's where they're at in their skill set, I think it's disruptive enough to win these games because it just goes against the flow," he said.
"It opens up chances that traditionally wouldn't open up. If they keep throwing the ball around and finding their gaps and taking their chances they should do well.
"Best of luck to them and all they can do is have a crack on the day and give it their best shot."
Inverell's game against Farrer kicks off at 7pm at Scully Park.