By the time the Bathurst side walked off the field in Sunday's division two final at Moorebank, they only had nine fit players.

Though Parkes emerged as 3-1 winners, they only scored the winning goal in the final quarter against a Bathurst side that fought through fatigue and the player shortage to stay in the contest.

"The kids learned the famous word resilience, it was a mighty effort to go down 3-1. It wasn't until the last quarter that they [Parkes] popped two in," coach Kent Bestwick said.

"Even the Parkes parents were saying we should've won that final, they said 'Our kids just sat back and couldn't work out how to get around us and beat us.'

"The kids just dug deep and ran their butts off. I had five under 15 players and the rest were 18s."

As Bathurst made the trip to Moorebank with just the bare 11 players, Bestwick admitted he had not expected his squad to fare better than the third placing in division two Bathurst achieved at the 2021 state titles.

But Bathurst opened its campaign with a 3-1 win over Port Macquarie-Hastings then backed that up by beating Manning Valley 2-1.

Though falling 4-2 to Parkes, Bathurst won its last pool game against North Sydney and Beaches 4-2 to book a spot in the semi-finals.

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"We had 12 players, late Thursday night we had a phone call and another player pulled out from being sick, so we went with 11 and my daughter Ellie played in that 11," Bestwick said.

"I'll be honest, my expectations, I was happy just to win two games given we went away with 11. It was pretty fast paced hockey.

"Then we won three and I was 'Okay alright', then we were in the semis so it was 'Okay we need to reset and have another crack' then the injuries came and I thought 'Oh my God' and I had to run through systems of how to play with nine guys.

"Ellie injured her ankle on Saturday so we went into the finals with 10. We strapped it and she ended up going on when she felt like she could go on, we just put her in front of the goalkeeper."

In the semi-finals Bathurst was drawn to play ACT - a side which was the hot favourite to advance.

But with a tick over 14 minutes left a piece of Fletcher Norris brilliance put Bathurst 3-1 up. He won the ball off an ACT rival, beat another, worked into the left of the circle and his tomahawk shot went over the head of the goalkeeper into the net.

"Like we beat the ACT state side, that was a majority of their of state under 18s side which played at nationals not that long ago. They were shocked to lose to us," Bestwick said.

Then it came to Parkes in the decider and an already short Bathurst side suffered another injury blow. But they showed resilience and pushed their rivals all the way to the end.

"Eight minutes into the first quarter Ruben Martin-Clark copped a stick to the face, broke his nose, six stitches. He ended up going to hospital, so that put us down to nine-and-a-half players," Bestwick said.

"It was a fantastic weekend considering what we had in terms of player numbers, it was really good."

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