East Campbelltown Eagles host Mounties at Waminda Oval this weekend, in a Sydney Shield grand final replay.
The Eagles, who beat Mounties to claim the title in 2014, are in fourth spot, two behind the leaders after 13 rounds.
A 26-20 defeat of the Belrose Eagles on Sunday has Campbelltown champing at the bit for the Mounties clash.
Feathers flew at Lionel Watts Reserve Belrose for the battle of two Eagles.
The guys from the north shore were eager to turn around their first round loss to the Campbelltown boys when they went down by the same scoreline, 26-20, at Waminda Oval earlier in the season.
But Campbelltown’s speed men, fullback Ben Baker and flying wingers Craig Moustakas and Giovanni Vatuvei were on fire, scoring a try each for a 16-0 lead after 20 minutes.
An Eagles mistake from the restart resulted in Belrose going on the attack to come up with their first points of the match.
There was no conversion so the score was 16-4 to the visiting Eagles.
But they hit back with a try of their own, this time to fast running Amanono Tovio to make the score 20-4.
Right on the stroke of half time Belrose crossed the line for an important try to claw back the gap to 20-10.
In the second half both teams defended extremely well, with neither line breached for the first 20 minutes.
But that man Ben Baker crossed for his second try to stretch the Eagles lead to 26-10 – but Belrose was not done yet.
The home side stepped up the tempo to help them cross for two touchdowns in quick succession.
With seven minutes left the score was 26-20, but the Eagles defence held on to win the premiership points.
Eagles coach Richard Barnes said after the game:
[social_quote duplicate=”no” align=”default”]“Very proud of the guys’ efforts today, no doubting our defence won us the game, this competition is just so strong week in week out, and our defence is winning us games.’’[/social_quote]
Man of the match was John Da Silva and Players Player went to Mason Talolua, with great performances from Jarryd Eggleton, Sean Connor and Ben Janskowski.
RESULTS:
A Grade – East Campbelltown Eagles 18 defeated Five Dock 0; Man of the match went to Jaston Apaola while Vili Vai grabbed the players player honours;
Under 19- East Campbelltown Eagles 58 defeated Ingleburn RSL 0.
