The championships drew to a close on Saturday after an unbelievable three days of competition in which old records were broken and new ones smashed.

Early in the competition, it appeared that defending champs Kelso Fire and Rescue were going to take it out again after their 2012 victory as they shot to the lead, but it wasn’t to be.

After a stellar second day, Dorrigo and Tamworth turned it into a two-horse race as they climbed to the top of the leader board. 

The two teams strengthened their lead on day three and ended up pushing the local boys down to third place overall. 

But the Kelso team weren’t disheartened.

They recognised the skill of their successors and are happy their loss was to a strong team. 

“It came up to the second-last event on Saturday before Dorrigo had it won,” deputy captain Shane Kearney said.

He added that Dorrigo had always suffered from a case of “always the bridesmaid, never the bride” and it was good to see them win after years of strong finishes.

“Dorrigo have been a very competitive team over the past 12 years. It was a good win,” he said.

Despite the final result, the Kelso team can still walk away with some great results in the individual events of the competition. 

They placed in the top five of most of their events on Friday and Saturday was much of the same.

“We got two seconds and a third on the last day,” Mr Kearney said. 

They are taking the loss in their stride and will set their sights on a comeback in 2016 at the next state championships.

“Our captain has retired from competition, so we have to rebuild our team to try to get our title [from 2012] back,” Mr Kearney said. 

But there is a silver lining for the Kelso team. Their third place win has made them eligible for the 2015 Australasian Championships in Echuca. 

The final scores of the championships were Dorrigo on 1451, Tamworth on 1047 and Kelso on 961. The Bathurst brigade narrowly missed out on a top 10 finish, coming in 11th overall with 348 points.