South West Rocks Marlins' late rally in the Hastings League season opener just fell short, with Laurieton Hotel Stingrays winning the game 36-30 at Laurieton Oval on Saturday (April 15).
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A back-and-forth first half saw the Marlins troop off at halftime down 24-12. The Stingrays skipped to a 30-18 lead midway through the second half and looked to have the game well in their keeping.
However, a few costly errors saw the Stingrays down to 11 players in the last 10 minutes of the game which allowed the Marlins to claw their way back to a six-point margin.
A questionable forward-pass call disallowed a Marlins try in the closing minutes of the game with the Stingrays just holding on to claim their first win of the Hastings League season.
South West Rocks Marlins coach Paul Owens said the game was theirs to be won on Saturday.
"[The Stingrays] made a fair few mistakes in the second half because we were frustrating them and they knew we were starting to get on top of the game," he said.
"We were in a position to win it at the end there but just got unlucky with the [forward pass] call."
Stingrays captain-coach Adrian Daley admitted he knew the first game of the season wouldn't be pretty, but he was suitably impressed with the effort of his side.
"I expected the game to be like that, the first game of the year is always a bit scrappy," he said. "We had a few dropped balls and discipline issues that we will need to fix up this week.
"The Marlins did well to get back in the game, and we did well to hang on in the end."
Owens said he took some positives out of the scrappy contest.
"We don't want to be losing games, but in this case it was a loss that we can take a lot of positives from," he said.
"I was really happy that we held our discipline during the game... and the fact that we competed for the whole 80 minutes showed a lot of promising signs.
"We had a couple of young players out there on Saturday in what was probably their first senior game of footy, and they proved that they were up to the task so we were extremely happy with them as well."
The Marlins will play their first home game of the season on Saturday, April 22, when they host the Lake Cathie Raiders.
Owens said he will be making sure the team is focused and ready to produce another 80-minute performance.
"Our effort was really good on the weekend, so I just want that same effort again this weekend," he said.
"We can't just expect to play at home and win, we need to make sure that we're doing all the little things right for the full 80 minutes.
"If we do that then we will only get better from here."
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