THEY may have missed out on the top prize but Bathurst District Football could be proud of their finals appearance at last weekend's Cowra Country Over 35s Cup.
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Bathurst District Football sent three teams away to the popular event, despite being down on numbers, and two of those sides quickly put themselves among the front runners at the event.
The Bathurst Blue team progressed to the final but went down 4-2 to Wagga in an exciting decider, while the Bathurst White men made their way to the semi-finals.
Many Bathurst players had to extra matches due to the low numbers, and some even racked up eight matches in the space of just two days.
BDF's Andrew Rankin said the Bathurst team could hold their heads high after succeeding despite the numbers disadvantage.
"Considering we took out 31 players away, and had them across three teams, and it was nearly November it was a huge weekend," he said.
This is at least my fourth year going to this tournament and I'll keep coming back for more. It's brilliant.
- Andrew Rankin
"I'm really pleased with how we did, and we were able to get one team into the final and one of the others only narrowly missed out."
The atmosphere at the event was top notch, and Rankin said the Cowra association should be thrilled with the event they put together.
"This is at least my fourth year going to this tournament and I'll keep coming back for more. It's brilliant," he said.
"Steve Ford is the guy who runs it all for Cowra Eagles and he does an amazing job.
"This was the first year we had a full tournament of 16 teams, and we've had interest from Orange, which is a new thing.
"The sportsmanship at the tournament is great as well. We only had one or two yellow cards across the whole weekend."