The Coota Tri Colours have won their way through to a home Grand Final at Country Club Oval after coming from behind to secure a 1 point win, in a nail bit-ing finish in the major semi final against the Harden Red Devils on Saturday at Robert’s Park.
Trailling 17-0 at half time and with two players in the bin while Harden also had one resting up, Coota took charge of the second half and proved too strong.
Coota Coach Mitch Wakeford said, “Harden were very enthusiastic and physical from the opening kick off.
They made the most of their opportunities.
I thought they were the better team for most of the game.
To our boys credit, they have just grown a lot as a group and rather than drop their heads at 17-0 they stayed in the game.
In the last 10 minutes we went back to what has been working for us, which is playing a little more direct.
In doing so we got a couple of late tries and snuck away with the win.” Wakeford took control of the match and when Coota were given a penalty in front, he took the ball and chipped cross field in an Alfie Langer-Willie Carne style origin effort which immediately paid off when it was caught by Jack Ruskin, before being converted, which made it 17-7.
Harden took a penalty goal to make it 20-7, be-fore Coota took it up a notch with a pushover try from the scrum which made it 20-14.
The game was in the balance with damag-ing runs taking their tolls on both attacker and de-fender. Self preservation went out the window in the final ten minutes.
Back Rower Cam Stanley snatched a ball from the Devils and showed his class, experience and speed to bolt 50 metres downfield. Hamish Pennington had to kick the conversion from just inside the right touchline.
Coota went to the lead in the final few minutes 21-20 and held on to take the win to the jubilation of the crowd. Mitch is looking forward to the home Grand Final at Country Club Oval after the 2020 game was played at Les Boyd Oval.
Coota hasn’t hosted a Grand Final at Country Club Oval since 2006, the same year Harden defeated Goulburn in the Monaro competition and Coota won the South West comp.