RUGBY LEAGUE
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BATHURST Panthers will continue to walk the Group 10 premier league finals tightrope tomorrow when they host Orange CYMS in a vital encounter for both teams at Carrington Park.
The plight of Panthers is the more extreme as they try to make up a deficit to the flying Orange Hawks. Even now if they were to win every game, they would still be relying on other results to get them into the top five.
Coach John Fearnley has conceded that the form of Hawks might mean his team’s finals hopes are already dashed, but it won’t change their desire to build on their season-best performance against Mudgee two weeks ago.
Fearnley has confirmed that he won’t be at the helm next season and wants his players to finish 2014 as strongly as possible with an eye to what is to come.
“Mudgee didn’t do us any favours last week in losing to Hawks, a win for them there would have had us within three points, but instead the gap is five and that’s going to be tough,” Fearnley said.
“Whether we make it or not though, it is important that we take as many positives as we can to the end of this year and into the next.
“We are paying the price now for dropping games earlier in the season that we shouldn’t have, the Blayney and Oberon games spring to mind and we lost to St Pat’s by two points early as well.
“Watching the tape of the Mudgee game, it was frustrating to see us playing so well whereas a few weeks before that we lost to a team that hadn’t won a game in two years.”
With Mudgee and St Pat’s holding a small buffer in first and second position, CYMS themselves are in a battle with Cowra and Hawks for third spot and the double-chance in the finals.
The premiers lost four straight matches and looked to be on the slide before at least arresting the downward momentum with wins over Blayney and Oberon.
Fearnley isn’t fooled by any suggestion that CYMS are ripe for the picking.
“Look at all their premiership years recently and they’ve probably had a bit of a trough at some stage and it’s about now that they start to build it up again towards the important part of the season,” he said.
“They have a very strong team, Warick Colley is playing reserve grade this week, that’s how good they’re going.
“With [halfback] Mick Sullivan we are going to have to cut down his time and options as much as possible, but he’s a very smart player.
“Someone like Dan Stuart, we have to get up and get numbers on him, but if we aren’t in one line and are jagged, he will find a gap and make us pay.”
Though he wasn’t present for the win over Mudgee due to family commitments, Fearnley saw plenty of improved areas from watching a replay of the game.
They are aspects that have to stay at a similar level tomorrow.
“Matt Rose played as well as I’ve seen for a long time, his kicking game was superb,” the coach said.
“The energy and enthusiasm, the two things we’ve lacked in attack and defence. The fact that whenever there was a half-break made, there were two or three blokes there backing it up.
“It was great to see.”
Tomorrow’s match kicks off at 2.30pm.
BATHURST PANTHERS: 1 Cody Robbins, 2 Chris Shephard, 3 William Kennedy, 4 Blake Lawson, 5 Mitch Davis, 6 Matt Rose, 7 Blake Dean, 8 Brent Seager (c), 9 Luke Carpenter, 10 Osea Sadrau, 11 Trent Rose, 12 Mick Ingwersen, 13 Jake Betts, 14 Blake Seager, 15 Jed Betts, 16 Matt Woolmington.