Camden Haven Anacondas will need to go the long way home if they are to progress to the Mid North Coast Hockey League men's decider.
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The Anacondas let a chance at hosting rights slip away when they conceded late in a 4-3 loss to Taree Sharks in their grand final qualifier in Port Macquarie on Saturday.
Adam Rhook, Jaidyn Rossiter and Jared Waters got on the scoresheet for Camden Haven while John Gudgeon claimed a brace and Wade Harry and Fletcher Pearce also scored for Sharks.
Camden Haven captain Simon Thresher said the Manning side found the back of the net with about three minutes remaining to break the 3-all deadlock.
"It's one hundred percent the one that got away," he said.
"Truth be told we probably had more scoring opportunities than what Sharks did, but we couldn't put the ball in the back of the net.
"Nerves got to us in the circle and we couldn't trap the ball to get the decent strikes off in amongst the forward line."
Both teams were guilty of showing ill-discipline with a number of green (two minute) and yellow (five minute) cards handed out throughout the contest.
If Camden Haven had have won they would have earned hosting rights for the August 14 grand final, but instead they will play Taree Tigers in Port Macquarie this Saturday (August 7) for a shot at redemption.
Thresher is hopeful defender Jack Redfern will return for the do-or-die clash after he missed the Sharks loss while awaiting the results of a Covid test.
"We missed him in the backline where we reverted a bit to old style play and became very defensive," the captain admitted.
"I'm the centre back so I should be controlling it from back there, but we didn't push forward to get in their faces. It left their midfield open and they got the turnarounds and punished us on top of the circle."
The Anacondas will go into the clash confident despite the honours being even in the two clashes this season with the Taree side.
Camden Haven won the last clash 4-3 on June 26 while the Tigers held on for a 6-4 victory on May 22.
"Tigers are a big, physical team and they've got a couple of key players who are quite strong on the ball and quite quick," Thresher said.
"We've got to better manage how we counteract that in defence and make sure in defence we don't stick as wide to the sidelines. We need to congregate more towards the top of the circle so on the turnarounds we've got a bit more of a defensive battery there as opposed to a one-on-one situation.
"We've got to take stock of what we didn't do well in the last game. We had plenty of circle penetrations and plenty of opportunities in the circle but we just didn't put the ball in the back of the net."
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