Wellington coach Aidan Ryan feels his club has been boosted by the whole town throwing its support behind the Cowboys as they head into the unfamiliar territory of Group 11 finals football.
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While the Wellington league tag side finished in sixth spot, Ryan said having three of Wellington’s four grades in the semi-finals was “pretty good for the club considering the last two years have only had one team in either semi”.
“It’s massive, the whole town is right behind us,” he said.
“We are all working together to get the fundamentals right and we are all looking forward to having the supporters there at home rallying behind us.”
Ryan said there was a few nervous Cowboys, having never played in the finals before, but they were being mentored by the more experienced players.
“They really don’t know what they are in for, but we are taking about past experience with them, and we want them to be prepared. It’s a massive challenge now and a whole different ball game to what normal round football is,” he said.
The Cowboys head into the finals with momentum with 44-28 win over fifth-placed Macquarie in the final round being the side’s third successive win.
Meanwhile, Parkes is coming off a heavy 44-6 loss to rivals Forbes last week.
Despite the difference in form, Ryan is expecting a tough challenge.
They split their regular season encounters with one win each, the most recent being a 25-24 thriller the Cowboys won courtesy of an AJ Davis field goal.
“We don’t start well with Parkes and we always struggle to beat them, but we know what kind of side they are, and we know we have to play a lot smarter,” he said.
“We know we can win. They had a good lead on us last time and our completion rate was so disgraceful that we shouldn’t have won, but we did. So we know we can beat them, we just have to do it the easy way and not the tough way.”
Ryan said his side needed to improve their defence after conceding four tries against Macquarie last time out but said the side would be aided by the return of EJ Fernando and Richard Peckham.
“We need to work on our defence,” Ryan said.
“We know we can score points, but our defence has been really soft in patches.
“Last week we let Macquarie score 18 points in the last 15 minutes. This week we need to defend our butts off a lot better than that.”
The first grade game is expected to kick-off at 2.45pm.