However, on this occasion, finishing second in itself was a courageous effort as Dubbo suffered several injuries early in the tournament and continued to soldier on.

Goalkeeper and captain Damien Huckle praised his players and said Dubbo would definitely be a reckoning force in 2010.

“We lost the grand final again, this time to Goulburn,” Huckle said.

“We only went down with six players which meant just the one reserve, but in the first game midfielder Matt Waters strained an ankle ligament.

“He strapped it up and basically played on one leg for the whole tournament.

“In the second game Kurt Ward rolled his ankle pretty bad and had to miss a couple of games.

“The injury toll hurt us a fair bit so I was proud of how well we did with what we had.

“Our trainer and manager Anthony Gaydon did a great job looking after our injured players.”

Dubbo were “a bit rusty” in their first round match against Bathurst, going down 2-1, before winning 6-5 on the buzzer in their next game against Central Coast.

Then they came up against Goulburn - a side who had previously played in division one but returned to division three after not playing in the tournament for the past few years.

They made full use of rotating their 10 players and won 13-0 while injuries, fatigue and a tight schedule became a big factor for Dubbo.

By the time Dubbo met Newcastle their campaign had become do or die and they beat Newcastle 6-5 in an often spiteful game.

Again they needed to win their first game on Sunday morning against Coffs Harbour to reach the semi-finals, but started the first five minutes of the game with just three players while the rest of the team tended to strapping their injuries.

“I was in goals and we only had two players out on the field including Aaron Sutton who had never played indoor hockey before,” Huckle said.

“But we held on and they never scored, and we ended up going on to win 9-0.”