A premiership title for the town still recovering from last year's tragic bushfire, and a club recently named Country Rugby League Club of the Year, has been a long time coming.

Television wasn't even introduced to Australia when the Sea Eagles won their last premiership 66 years ago, and the club is yet to win in a competition containing a Bega squad.

Coach James Scott's team has risen from fourth place in reserve grade last season, and Scott, who played for the Sea Eagles in 1996, said his squad is hoping to create history on Sunday.

"It's bigger than the team, it's about the community," Scott said.

"The boys are just stoked to be here. It'll be a fairytale if we get it."

Tathra has won three premierships, with all three wins amazingly recorded in consecutive years.

The Sea Eagles dominated the post war period, beating Eden in 1951, 52 and 53 to win what was then the Pambula/Imlay Rugby League competition, before losing the 1954 grand final to Eden and the 1955 final to Bemboka.

The teams string of five grand final appearances in a row was only ended when two Bega teams left the Far South Coast/Northern Sub-Group and rejoined the more southern competition.

The town's last premiership came one year after the devastating 1952 bushfires, and one year on from the March 2018 bushfire, club president Peter Finucane is hoping history will repeat itself.

"We've had a few blokes who've stayed around the area to help rebuild, and it may have been the same back in '53," he said.

With a renaming of the competition in 1956, the Sea Eagles lost the 1961, 62 and 63 grand finals after finishing on top of the table in two of those three years.

In 1965 they finished as minor premiers but were unable to force their way into the grand final.

The Sea Eagles upset the Roosters in the 1971 Caltex knockout competition in front of what was described as a "near record crowd" in Bega. Although the competition had an unusual start to the day.

On July 12, 1971, The Canberra Times reported Group 16 officials arrived at the ground "early in the morning to find about a quarter of the playing area under water and one of the goalposts bent almost to the ground".

"Vandals had turned on water taps during the night," journalist Reg Beaver reported.

In 1972 Tathra again finished top of the table and went home empty handed after losing 12-7 to the Bega Roosters in the grand final.

It would be almost three decades, and a new century, before they would contest another final, which they lost to Bega in 2001, and Eden in 2002.