The Harlequins are through to the grand final of the Sydney First Division women’s tier two competition after a gritty victory on the weekend, reports ANDREW CHOICE.
After a full round of the competition the participating teams are split into a tier 1 and tier 2 groups, which go on to have a new competition each.
Harlequins, while disappointed not to go through to the top tier, are undefeated in tier 2.
What’s more, after a hard fought win over West Harbor on Saturday they have qualified for the Tier 2 grand final next Saturday.
The Quins girls started well, putting a lot of pressure on the West Harbour goal line, but could not crack some very spirited defence and eventually settled for what would be a very important three points.
From the restart Harlequin camped in the opposition half and mounted pressure on their opponents.
Eventually the defence cracked when Atarsi Latu charged over to give her side a 10-0 lead.
Momentum slowly turned to favour West Harbour and the Harlequins girls found themselves under a lot of pressure.
As their errors mounted West Harbour struck for an unconverted try, with the teams going to the break at 10-5 to the Quinnies.
The game continued to go back and forth in the second half until Harlequins eventually broke the deadlock with a great back line move to extend their lead to 15-5.
However West Harbour would not go away and for the last 20 minutes they mounted sustained pressure on Harlequins, who would admit they could have handled it better.
After two yellow cards and a string of penalties, West Harbour scored, and trailed 15 -12 with five minutes to go.
Quins regained their composure and hung on to win and go through to the grand final where they will play Gordon.
The coming weekend is a big one for the club, with the women’s grand final on Saturday to be followed by the men’s first grade semi final against neighbours Camden Rams, who defeated Bowral 30-25 in their last game.
First grade men had a bye on the weekend, so they should be nicely rested for the big games ahead.
Their semi final is scheduled to be played at Shamrocks Ocean Park Woonona, with Camden’s reserve grade also playing their semi final there on Sunday against Shoalhaven.
In other Harlequins news, their U12, U13 and U16 junior teams have been eliminated from the finals.
The U18 side just missed out on a finals spot in their first season in the Sydney Division 1 competition.
To finish just out of the top was a great achievement.
