THE Candelo-Bemboka Panthers are one final hurdle from the best finish to a return season you could ask for.
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The Panthers decimated the Moruya Sharks in Sunday’s group 16 rugby league preliminary clash 26-4.
Head coach Matt Inskip said he was ecstatic with the win and looked forward to a rematch with the Eden Tigers.
“I am pretty happy and happy for the boys, it is good to get to the big one,” Inskip said.
The mistakes made against the Tigers in the major semi-final virtually disappeared and the Panthers followed their game plan to a tee.
“We just executed, there was not one bad player in the 20 we had,” Inskip said.
“Everyone just did their job.”
The score could have looked even more lop-sided, but the Panthers had a difficult time kicking conversions.
However, Inskip said the difficult angles meant the tries were out wide and “the ball did the talking”.
“The guys scored out wide is part of the reason, but that means we are letting the ball do the talking and that is what we practice at training.”
The Panthers dominated play with solid runs from Bobby Taylor and some incisive work by Ben O’Reilly out of the centres.
David Inskip kept the Moruya’s forward pack busy with his hard-running in the ruck.
The squad’s performance was lifted by the opportunity to clash once more with the Eden squad.
“It was a bit of motivation for us to have another crack at Eden,” Inskip said.
Meanwhile, for the coach, it means keeping up tradition in Group 16 and serving his squad well.
“It has been my goal to make the grand final, everyone has done it and I didn’t want to be the team that didn’t.”
The Panthers also escaped the clash relatively unscathed, but will be watchful of Luke O’Donnell’s recovery this week.
“There is just a few little niggles, but Luke could be a bit suspect, hopefully he pulls up ok.”
Inskip said the Tigers played a similar brand of football to the Sharks and keeping the error count down could be key to claiming the title.
“We’re just looking at cutting the errors down.
“Playing the last two weeks of football has probably nullified that.
“We just need to execute and when we get into movements to just go through with them,” he said.
