Bathurst Giants win over Bathurst Bushrangers ahead of senior women's preliminary final

Just seven days out from their scheduled knockout clash the Giants recorded a 7-11-53 to 1-3-9 win over the Bushrangers to reaffirm their favouritism for the next contest.

There wasn't much between the teams at George Park 1 in the run towards half-time, with the Giants holding a slender 2-7-19 to 1-2-8 advantage, but the defending champions pulled clear during a strong second half's play.

They'll come together again at George Park 2 on Saturday to determine who will take on Dubbo Demons in the upcoming grand final.

Giants skipper Katie Kennedy said it was an encouraging way to build towards the higher-stakes clash.

"The Bushies really came out firing and it was a very physical game so it was great to get that leg up on them going into finals," she said.

"We tried a couple of different things to see if it would work, and it did, so we'll spice it up a bit I think and hopefully blow them off the park.

"There's still room for improvement. We struggled in our forward line a little bit and they were very tight on us so we're going to really try and open it up and get the advantage over them by using the space."

Bushrangers co-captain Kelsey Richards said her side did a great job at shutting down the Giants for much of the game, and that should give the team encouragement ahead of the rematch.

"We only had 16 players, so we had no-one on the bench, and that probably impacted us a bit in the second half, and the weather was freezing, and we just struggled to get the ball forward and get goals on the board," she said.

"We still put a lot of pressure on them around the ground. They're an elite team so it's really hard to stop their run and carry. And once they get it in their forward line they score a high percentage of the time.

"We still fielded a strong team, even if we were a little undermanned, so I'm impressed with how we played. They didn't get a lot of easy ball across the ground, which is really encouraging to see coming up to this weekend.

"We feel like we can hold them pretty well but then there's patches of five to six minutes where they're capable of putting two or three goals away. Without taking credit away from how good they are, sometimes the score doesn't reflect the quality of the contest."

BATHURST GIANTS 7-11-53 (Elise Gullifer 3, Bella Gibson, Olivia Johnston, Katie Kennedy, Mollu Mann) defeated BATHURST BUSHRANGERS 1-3-9 (Lauren Grundy)

Reading this on mobile web? Download our news app. It's faster, easier to read and we'll send you alerts for breaking news as it happens. Download in the Apple Store or Google Play.