AT half-time in Saturday's New Holland Cup match when CSU walked off the field trailing Dubbo Rhinos 21-5, Dave Conyers thought his side's chance at winning was gone.
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He was very glad to be proved wrong.
Conyer's injection of more experienced players off the bench changed momentum and CSU stormed home to post a 32-21 win over the hosts.
"We were down 21-5 at half-time, it was the worst we'd played all year in that first half, but I guess you expect that with the amount of new blokes we had in, we had five or six new players and it was a bit disjointed," Conyers said.
"I thought we were gone, we just kept dropping the ball in our back line plays, we kept giving away bloody stupid ball. It was one of those halves when we just couldn't get anything right."
The second half of rugby was much better from CSU as they cut down on the handling errors which had plagued their first 40 minutes.
With six minutes to go they hit the lead at 22-21 after a Lachlan Meville try and from there they went on to claim a bonus point win, the Rhinos ending the contest with just 12 players on the field.
"Lachie was the man of the match too, he had an outstanding game. That guy has been our most consistent, best forward all year by a long way," Conyers said.
"We scored 27 unanswered points in that second half, we just got a lot of first graders on the paddock and that made the difference ... they really pulled it together and played some pretty good footy.
"They [Rhinos] ended up getting three cards in the second half and it sort of blew out the window a bit, but that was late in the game, we had to work pretty hard to come back before that.
"They played really good rugby for 60 minutes, that's the best they've played against us, but they just lost their discipline.
"It was a nothing game in terms of the ladder, but it was one I didn't want to lose."
CSU 32 (Carlos Ahsee 2, Aidan Kennelly, Lachlan Melville, Ethan Cusick, Sam Chamberlain tries; Ethan Cusick conversion) defeated DUBBO RHINOS 21 (Dale Smith 2, Neale Madden tries; Dale Smith 3 conversions)
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