While the Goldminers went into the decider at Maitland missing star duo Matt Gray and Will Cranston-Lown, Osborn felt Newcastle would have won regardless.

Though Bathurst led for the first four minutes of the final, Newcastle soon found its stride. By quarter-time the Goldminers trailed 23-11 and though they tried hard, could not get back into the contest.

”The score doesn’t reflect what we’d done through the season, but they were absolutely brilliant,” Osborn said of his rival.

“They were hot, their percentage from the floor would’ve been in the high 80s. One of their guys, one of the New South Wales all star five guards, he scored 51 points.

“This was the form he was in, he hit nine threes and then he’d gone out and they told him to shoot the next one right-handed. He was on the corner of the baseline and just let one go right-handed and swish.

“We got beaten by a much better basketball team on the day. It was as simple as that.”

In order to reach Sunday’s grand final, the Goldminers first had to get past Illawarra in Saturday’s semi-final.

That they did, leading all the way for a 73-65 win. Cranston-Lown potted 23 points, Victor Chua 18, while both Zac Simons and Kobe Mansell finished with 14 apiece.

“That was certainly the highlight of the weekend, that we beat Illawarra and led the whole way,” Osborn said.

Newcastle won its semi-final against Sydney Comets 77-67 the same day to join the Goldminers in the premiership match.

Simons scored the first three points of that game, but after a time-out midway through the opening quarter, Newcastle lifted its intensity.

Though the Goldminers closed within seven of the lead during the second quarter, by half-time Newcastle had pushed out to a 49-29 advantage. From there it went on with the job

“We started off well, the first half of the first quarter was pretty much basket for basket. Then the Newcastle coach called a time out and they just went up a gear, they came out and just put so much pressure on us,” Osborn said.

“We did everything humanly possible to try and stop them, contain them, but they were just that level above us all over the floor.

“That’s the nature of the game, you come across a side that’s hot, well good on them, they deserve to win.

“Considering in that 14-team rank we finished five [at the end of the regular season] and now we’ve finished two, no other side there this weekend did that, no-one came from outside of the top four to make the grand final.”