With a maiden New Era Cup grand final berth the dangling carrot, Orange Barbarians led at half-time of Saturday’s preliminary final at Wade Park and were still in front with 15 minutes to go, but let their lead slip as CSU Bathurst roared home.
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The students scored three tries in the dying stages of the clash to ultimately prevail 36-26, beat the Barbarians for the first time in 2018 and also book their tickets to next weekend’s big dance against Blackheath, at the Blackcats’ Don Bradman Oval fortress.
It was halves Izaac Scott and Billy Dickinson that provided CSU’s much-needed spark.
Barbarians opened the scoring then led 12-6 at the break, extending that lead to 26-18 midway through the second half before Scott and Dickinson stamped their authority on the sudden-death grand final qualifier.
“Izaac and Billy trotted them up field in the back end of that second half, we were making 50, 60 metres a set,” CSU coach Riley Scelly, a relieved man, said.
“Izaac put through James Woolmington into three holes in three sets so we made metres, got up field and then forced the errors from them. It was ours to play with down their end.
“We showed a fair bit of guts at the end [with those] three late tries, really it was a lot closer than the score [might suggest].
“When we went over I was running around like an idiot on the sideline – they were really good team tries.”
Scelly said a half-time rev-up from the latter and skipper Oscar Thorburn had played a fair role in lifting the side too.
“We had a talk in the sheds at half-time that this could be our last game, especially for myself and Oscar as it’s our last year at the club,” Scelly said.
“Oscar and Billy just said that we had to take everything out there, if you get a knock then you get a knock, you’ve got to leave everything on the field because you don’t want to come off at the end feeling like you’d not done something, missed that tackle or dropped that ball.
“I think that pumped them up a little bit.”
As exciting as the victory was though, Scelly’s under no illusions as to how difficult his side’s task is this weekend.
There’s few, if any, harder prospects across any of the Western region’s competitions than facing the Blackcats as Don Bradman Oval. Blackheath, simply, has been in a different stratosphere to any other New Era Cup sides this year.
But grand final day will be a big one for the Bathurst club, with both of its league tag sides winning through to face each other, and Scelly says he’s hoping that helps.
His side also has a real drive to prove its critics wrong.
“When we got beaten (36-24) by Portland in the first round, people were posting on Facebook saying [we] weren’t a chance to make the grand final and that we were poor [in that game], but here we are,” Scelly fired.
“We are hoping now that we can prove a few people wrong.”