And it wasn’t the 20-10 scoreline.

That dreaded four-day turnaround.

The one Canterbury Bulldogs coach Des Hasler barked about in the lead-up to Sunday’s fixture, and the one Cronulla, Canberra and North Queensland were then very happy to hook their bandwagons onto as well.

Fitzgibbon said the flawed turnaround should have been avoided after a similar scheduling blunder was pointed out after the 2016 City-Country at Tamworth.

Last year, Canberra faced St George Illawarra four days after the bush clash. This year, Canterbury plays North Queensland in Sydney. Both are four day turnarounds after the City-Country.

“It gets canned because of the pressure the schedule is under,” Fitzgibbon said.

“I just hope they provide other access (for country areas) whether that’s NRL teams coming out this way … (hopefully City-Country concept) can be re-booted in another way.

“But the pressure on clubs was unfair. They’ve got a job to do. Just don’t put a game on four days later.”

Fitzgibbon said it’s a shame one of the best footy weeks he and the rest of the Country team has had wouldn’t be around again in 2018.

The 2017 clash debuted nine country players. There was another nine debutants in the City team too.

That’s opportunities for representative exposure no longer set to be afforded in the NRL.

“To debut at a rep level and the standards went up … that was a damn hard game for everyone involved,” Fitzgibbon said.

“It burns, it hurts ... but proud, that was a good hard game of footy.”

Country skipper Mitch Aubusson said the atmopshere generated by the Mudgee crowd was electric.

“Really special,” he said.

“The way Mudgee embraced us during the week was really good. Running out for warm-up was great. They really kept us in it and we can’t thank the Mudgee people enough.”