SINCE the inception of the Mid West League's league tag competition CSU has enjoyed a stranglehold on the premiership, but now the Mungals are under huge pressure to extend their streak.
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The five-time defending premiers are facing the possibility of being eliminated from the title race after losing Saturday's major semi-final 32-14 to the Cargo Heelers.
It is a performance that coach Phil Tuilau knows the Mungals must improve on if they wish to reach a sixth consecutive grand final.
"We played our worst game of the year to be honest. We defended horribly," he admitted.
"They all had their heads down after the game, they know they had all played terribly, but at least that shows me that girls know they can do better and know a performance like that just won't cut it if they want to win the thing."
While CSU finished as the undefeated minor premiers and had beaten the Heelers 18-14 at Cargo on the way to doing so, the Mungals knew a repeat of that result would not be easy.
Not only did the Heelers hold the home ground advantage for the first grand final qualifier and were coming off the back of a 52-4 victory over the Orange Barbarians, but the Mungals had a less than ideal preparation.
A snowed out round and a bye to finish the regular season then sitting out the first week of finals given the minor premiership meant it had almost been a month between games for CSU.
It showed.
I think the girls in some sort of way just forgot to play football.
- Phil Tuilau
"I don't want to make excuses, however, I think it was a month since we had last played - that was Oberon in the middle of August - and also the uni mid-session break really disrupted us and meant we couldn't have any proper training sessions," Tuilau said.
"I would say there were nerves too because coming up against a team like Cargo we always knew it was going to be tough. I think the girls in some sort of way just forgot to play football.
"There were a few things that I did, some positional changes that didn't work out and I blame myself for that. So we'll go back to one of the starting teams we had at the start of the season.
"I don't think I've ever felt so sad for the girls after a loss as much as I did this weekend."
While Cargo will now work towards adding a Mid West premiership to the Woodbridge titles they won in 2018 and 2019, CSU faces the Orange Barbarians in the preliminary final.
The Barbarians beat Oberon 14-6 in the minor semi-final.
Tuilau is hoping that the disappointment of losing to Cargo will now act as a big motivator for his squad.
"It was probably the loss we needed to ground us and bring us down to earth. It showed us where we need to improve, I think we dropped the ball on how good we were, " he said
"I guess we just go back to training properly and hopefully we can improve for this weekend.
"I'll be asking for more intensity this week at training and certainly on the weekend."