The side booked its place on the big day when defeated the fancied Narromine club in a nail biter at Forbes 38 – 29, after leading 14 – 10 at half-time.

Their captain, Meg Eisenhauer, said that it was a see-sawing match with the final margin only coming as a result of a strong finish by the local side.

“It was try for try at one stage, but we always play better in the second half and we managed to get through in the end,” she said.

“At one stage there were about three points in it, but those few tries at the end which gave us a buffer, but it was tight all of the way through really.”

She added that an extended stay on the sidelines for the team – due to a last round bye, a forfeit by Bathurst and the finals schedule – did hurt their preparation, which they had taken measures to mitigate.

“We hadn’t played in four weeks, so we had a bit of a hit-out against the 15s last Tuesday night just to try and get the cobwebs out, but I know everyone was feeling it on Sunday,” she said.

“But it was good to get that game before the grand final, I think [grand final opponents] Cowra had three weeks off, so they’ll be in a similar situation as we were this past weekend.

“That’s to our advantage that they’ve had that time off.”  

The grand final will be played against Cowra this Saturday in Orange commencing at 9.10am at the Orange Emus’ ground.

Eisenhauer said that Cowra have been the benchmark team of the competition, however their loss in the final round of the regular season showed that they are beatable.

“They’ve beaten us every time we’ve played them, but they did lose to Bathurst and we’ve always beaten Bathurst and they are missing one of their better players, so it will be interesting and I think it will be a close match up,” she said.

She added that either way, making the grand final in their first season makes 2016 a success.

“For the inaugural year of the women’s team this definitely sets us up for a really good future, hopefully we can keep it going next year,” she said.

“If we won the trophy in our first year that would be incredible, but people are already more aware of the team and we’ve had a lot of support from the community.”

The women are the sole remaining Wombats in the Blowes Cup competition with the Colts bowing out on the weekend.

The most successful senior men’s team in 2016, their run ended at the preliminary final losing to CSU 23–nil after trailing 10-nil at half time.