Tallon Smith
The Gundagai Tigers will face the Wagga Kangaroos in the Group 9 Grand Final after securing a 32-20 win over the Young Cherrypickers in the Preliminary Final at Twickenham Oval in Tumut on Sunday.
Doubles to centres James Morgan and Gabriel Gul led the Tigers to the 12-point victory, one that ended the defending premiers’ season one game short of the Grand Final.
Gul opened the scoring with an incredible 65 metre dash off the back of a nonchalant linebreak in his own half to give Gundagai a 4-0 lead.
That advantage grew 10 minutes later when a short side raid from a scrum sent James Morgan over, before he crossed for a second off the back of a wide right side shift in the 25th minute to extend the Tigers lead to 16-0.
Toby Dasey continued the Tigers’ charge in the 33rd minute to further extend the margin to 22, before Young finally hit back off the back of a penalty when Jesse Corcoran carried four defenders to crash over to reduce the deficit to 22-6 at half time.
The Cherrypickers’ hopes of a comeback grew on the other side of the break when a sublime ball from Devon Makoare-Boyce sent winger Boro Navori over, but it was cancelled out soon after when Gul weaved his way from the left side back towards the posts to score.
A clever strip 10 metres out from the Young line saw Navori again give Young a chance with his second, but when Benjy Hannan crossed in the 58th minute, it was all but over, with a late try to Tom Giles closing the gap for a final score of 32-20.
Gundagai coach Aaron Gorrell said that his side rectified many of its poorer areas from their last start loss to Kangaroos in the six tries to four win.
“I think we fixed our wrongs from the week before,” he said.
“The week before, I think we tried to play a little bit too cute and didn’t earn the right to shift out to those blokes.
“Yesterday we muscled up in the middle and played the brand of footy that we want to play and it created a lot of opportunities out wider for blokes like that.”
After a tough afternoon out last week in Wagga, the challenge of backing up against the Young forward pack was always going to be a big one for the Tigers.
Despite many of their big men going in battered and bruised from the previous week, Gorrell said that they not only put in a good performance, but escaped relatively unscathed from the match.
“We were broken after last week, we had a fair few blokes I reckon if it wasn’t a prelim that probably wouldn’t have played,” he said.
“They’ve all got through better than they did the week before, which is good.
“I think it’s got us primed and ready now, we got a bit of a lesson there in that major semi, we probably got a little bit far ahead of ourselves after the easy win in the first week of finals.”
Speaking on the performances of his two strike centres, Gorrell said that while they were at their damaging best, it all came off the back of the side’s dominance in the middle of the field.
“We know how good they are, Morgs has been in the country side for the last three years, so he’s obviously got some quality, and Gul, he’s probably one of the most damaging centres running around,” he said.
“Our forwards I thought got on top of theirs, whereas the week before, I thought Kangaroos were on top of us through that middle.
“We sent the challenge out to our middles this week and I think they responded pretty well because Young’s pack [is] where they get their dominance in most games.
“So we knew we had to do that and I was confident that if we could do that, we had lot of points in us.”
The final hurdle for the Tigers in their premiership quest is a clash with the Wagga Kangaroos, who qualified for their third straight decider with a 34-16 win over Gundagai last week.
Heading into Sunday’s Grand Final, the Tigers mentor said that his side learned many key lessons from their previous meeting in the Major Semi and will be ready to go on Sunday.
“I think that 12-0 [start] sort of made us look a bit better than we were,” he said.
“I thought we were very poor still in that period, we just got lucky on two plays and then I think we thought it was all too easy and went away from what we’re good at.
“We’ve just got to concentrate on us, throughout the year I’ve said it most times that we’re our own worst enemy at times and we need to get into it, get into the grind and just be happy to play that long game and not try to play cute.
“When we do that, that’s when we play our best footy.”
The Grand Final against Wagga Kangaroos at Geohex Park in Wagga Wagga kicks off this Sunday at 3pm, with a huge crowd expected.
