City host the in-form Orange Ex-Services team this afternoon in a preliminary final, the winner set to take on Panthers in next weekend’s grand final in Lithgow.

Rightfully City will go in as favourites, but coach Lisa Quinn admits she and her players are coming up against a side who are close to the peak of their powers.

“I gave Exies a chance of beating Souths last week. I thought they might be able to do it, but to beat them 5-1 ... I certainly didn’t see that coming,” she said.

“Some of the girls who have been around for a while and know the other teams better than I do have said that they are the sort of team who tend to play better hockey in the semi-finals, and by the looks of the last two weeks that is what they are doing.

“There is no doubt we are going to have to lift if we’re going to beat them.”

City controlled most of the first half against Panthers last week, but the minor premiers lifted their intensity in the second half and Quinn’s side struggled to go with them.

A late goal to Casey Bayliss brought the score back to 3-2 and there had been one disallowed goal for City, but the areas of improvement were obvious to the coach.

“I think Lithgow really stepped up in terms of the speed they played at in the second half, and they’ve had a habit of doing that to us whenever we play them, whereas we tend to dominate the first half,” Quinn explained.

“I didn’t necessarily think they played better than us, both teams had patches of the game where they dominated, but ultimately they were good enough to hold on once they had control.

“We can’t afford to have those lapses this week. We want to come out firing from the first whistle and stay at that level for 70 minutes.”

City expected to suffer a major blow with the suspension of key forward Kelsey Willott, but it turned out that her green card for a high stick last weekend left her a single point short of an automatic suspension.

If defender Hannah Evans plays, City will field their strongest possible team of the season.

“Kelsey is just a firecracker for us in the front half of the field, and along with the likes of Jess Hotham and Dani Fisher, she forms such a good combination up there, so it is a bonus to have her in there,” Quinn said.

“Having Hannah would be great too and allow us to rotate our defence a bit better. It was very noticeable against Lithgow last week that they were constantly subbing on and off and every player that went on was just as good as the one who came off.

“It would be a luxury to be able to do that ourselves.”

Today’s match gets underway at 1.50pm at Bob Roach Field.