THE Port City Breakers escaped from Wingham on Saturday with two competition points.
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Coach Ben Sprague was all the more impressed with the effort considering being down four senior players.
Daniel Dumas, Mitchell Fowler, Adrian Daley and Ben Cross were all unavailable for the clash against the Tigers.
“Its hard enough winning at Wingham let alone doing it without some of your more experienced players,” Sprague said.
The coach said the win was a “massive improvement” on their last start loss to the Port Macquarie Sharks.
“We just seemed to want to go around the Sharks last week,” Sprague said. “This week we played a lot more straighter and cut a lot of the errors out.”
The Breakers got out to an 18-0 lead early on and went into the half time break ahead 30-10.
The Tigers surged back early in the second half to bring the score back to 30-26 with 15 minutes to go.
Sprague said the game was there for either team to take but it was the Breakers who found another gear, kicked ahead and won 40-26.
“I’m really proud of the way the boys hung in there early in that second half,” he said.
“Wingham had all the ball and were getting all the 50/50 calls. But they dug in and went on with it in the end.”
Sprague said the Breakers cause wasn’t helped by a sin binning of forward Sam Flanagan for a high shot.
“We’ve been training really hard, we had one of the hardest pre-seasons ever,” he said. “We’ve hardly even done any ball work, its been mostly fitness and you enjoy your football more when your fit and I think that’s starting to show.”