The Yass Magpies women's open tackle team continued its dominant form on Sunday with a 10-36 win over the Boomanulla Raiders in Kambah, but it was not as straightforward as it appeared on paper.
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Due to a number of byes and forfeits, the Magpies' last match was on July 6. Early in Sunday's game, five weeks of inactivity appeared to have slowed the girls down as they fell to a 10-0 deficit at half time.
However, on the other side of the break, Yass snapped out of their stupor and trampled the Raiders en route to 36 unanswered points.
"I didn't really know what to expect coming off that five weeks," Yass coach Josh Hardy said.
"We started off real slow and Boomanulla raced out to 10-0 at half time, and then the girls kicked into gear. It was like we hadn't missed a beat."
Hardy was at a loss to explain what caused the sudden turnaround from his side, and could only surmise that the team "knew what was at stake and that they could turn it around themselves."
Sunday's victory sees Yass progress to round 14 with 10 wins and no losses in 2019.
A second-last ranked Harden side is unlikely to change that statistic this weekend, but Hardy knows never to underestimate his opponents and expects the Hawks to be "tough" opponents
Regardless of this weekend's result, the Magpies are locked in for finals.
In just over a week, Yass will take to the field at Walker Park, where Hardy said he is "quietly confident."
The key for the Magpies come finals time, Hardy believes, is their defence.
"In preseason we identified our defence and we wanted an impetus on having the best defence in the comp," he said.
"Up until [Sunday] I was really happy with it, I think we'd conceded 42 points up until that point. It's definitely something we've prided ourselves on."
Despite the 10 points they leaked against Boomanulla, Yass still boast the strongest for-and-against differential in the competition by a distance of nearly 100 points.
This weekend, the Magpies will look to cap off their season against the Harden Hawks. The match will take place from 1pm on Saturday August 17 at McLean Oval, Harden.