The defending premiers, the Boomers won 36-32 but the match had just about everything, including 25 penalties – 19 of which came in the first half – two sin bins, plenty of brain snaps and a try from ageless bush footy doyen Bubba Kennedy.

All that led to the hosts leading the undefeated competition leaders by two points inside the final five minutes of the round 12 clash but Trundle captain-coach Adam Hall left his mark on the match in a pivotal play late in the game.

The veteran playmaker produced a towering bomb that left the Blue Heelers’ back three clutching at thin air, allowing opportunistic centre Ryan Porter to scoop up the loose ball and race in the match-sealing try, his third of the game.

The visiting Boomers managed to hold on at the death to come away with the all-important two points, a result that just about finishes Cargo’s 2018 campaign too.

Steve Lane’s Blue Heelers now find themselves five points adrift of the Woodbridge Cup top five with five rounds remaining before the post season after failing to put the icing on what was a clash that threatened to boil over on a number of occasions, but one Cargo should have won leading by four nearing the death.

For Trundle though, Hall said Sunday’s escape act at Cargo was a lucky result for the Boomers.

“Very much so, we made it bloody hard on ourselves. We’ve just got to be better … we are better than that but we got caught up in a stop-start game and lost our discipline,” he said.

“We got away with it though.”

Cargo opened the scoring through Daniel Lang in the south-east corner, but from that point on penalties punctuated the opening stanza.

Steve Lane was sin binned late in the half simply on the back of his side giving away 13 penalties in the first 35 minutes of the match and, on top of being a man down, the hosts found themselves trailing at the break too, Clay Hartin, Hall, Jacob Brady and Brendon Sense all crossing as the premiers raced to a 20-10 lead at oranges.

The Boomers led the Heelers by the same margin at the break in last year’s corresponding Trundle-Cargo clash only to go down by two points.

And after the hosts raced out of the sheds and found a 32-26 lead mid-way through the second half, Hall admits to being swept by an overwhelming sense of deja vu.

But the groundhog day experience was short lived with Porter scoring his side’s final two tries to seal the win, his side’s 11^th in a row in 2018.

“We’ve got a good run going and want to keep it going. It’s good to play those games and get away with a win,” Hall said, his side on track for back-to-back titles.

“There’s a good feeling there, we’ve got a lot out at the moment too … it doesn’t matter who steps up though, the attitude is always there and that helps.

“It was a bit of deja vu for a while there but we’re lucky we’ve got some class players and that made a difference.”

In the absence of big guns Jesse Durning and Hayden Robinson, Hall led from the front while Blake Ridges was tremendous in an 80-minute effort that didn’t go unnoticed by his coach.

“He played a full game of union yesterday and then to step up and play 80 minutes in the front-row, I can’t speak highly enough of him,” Hall said.