The upshot was that the Blues earned the right to host the Bulldogs this coming Saturday in the first division elimination final, after Gunnedah entered last weekend’s rehearsal with several players missing due to injuries and work commitments.

Narrabri raced to a 30-4 half-time lead to all but seal the result, although Bulldogs coach Trent Hilton was happy with the way Gunnedah fought back in the second half.

“In the second half our boys rallied and really stuck it to them,” Hilton said.

Narrabri scored the first try down the blindside before Gunnedah responded, and although the Blues scored next following a long pass, the Bulldogs were well in the hunt until the hosts piled on a few tries in the 15 minutes leading up to half-time.

As the Blues had fresh reserves while Gunnedah’s interchange players backed up from reserve grade, Hilton said Narrabri “had more punch”.

“They found holes in the ruck, and their forwards made big metres,” Hilton said, while also noting Narrabri halfback Kialu Brown was very good.

A couple of defensive misreads were costly for the Bulldogs, as was surrendering possession, with the Blues barging over for a couple of their tries.

Aaron Donnelly scored a couple of tries for Gunnedah while Lance Martin capped off a fine personal display when he crashed over the tryline in the second half.

Hilton said the talk at half-time was to “dig in”, and that the players subsequently did just that when “they could have thrown it in and looked ahead to next week”.

Gunnedah’s comeback was always likely to fall short although the scoreline could have been a lot closer had the Bulldogs not bombed a few scoring chances in the second half.

A few times the Bulldogs were tackled just short of the line, and at other times a Narrabri player beat a Gunnedah player to the ball by the narrowest of margins.

Goal-kicking was also costly as the Bulldogs converted just one of their four tries, although some of the kicks were from out wide while some of Narrabri’s tries were scored within goal-kicking range.