Central North Rugby Round 5: James Perrett scores four as Gunnedah beat Pirates 36-21

In a see-sawing and hard-fought tussle that had a bit of everything the Red Devils prevailed 36-21 in front of a big crowd at Gunnedah Rugby Park to make it four-from-four.

They had to dig deep, playing the better part of the last 12 minutes with 14 after Will Bright was yellow carded for repeated infringements.

As tensions that had simmered throughout the game boiled over and a melee ensued, Sanimo Navatu was at the same time also red-carded after entering the field of play from the sidelines (he had previously been subbed off)

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Up by just 10 at that stage, the home side had to really rally to hold Pirates out with the premiers enjoying some of their best territory of the half.

But a couple of telling lineout steals from Tim McDermott helped the Red Devils keep them at bay.

Perrett then gave them a bit more breathing room with his fourth.

Coming out of nothing really, after ghosting through the defence Marcus Hayne grubbered for the fullback. He then soccered the ball forward and won the race to the line.

Red Devils skipper Zac Newcombe said it was a really good win for his side.

"They're (Pirates) always the benchmark," he said.

"They've won it four years in a row now so it's a good test."

Pirates started the better with Jackson Sharpe sniping from the ruck after some good charges from the forwards.

"We did everything we said we weren't going to do," Newcombe said.

But they knew "what they had to do to get it back".

"We just had to lift the tempo," he said.

"They came out firing and we just had to get the momentum back, take it off them."

Elija Sufia helped them them do that scoring just a couple of minutes later.

Perrett then crossed for his first to put the Red Devils ahead with just over 15 minutes to play in the first half.

Growing in confidence, he and Darrell Morrison then combined to extend their lead. Sensing the space in behind, Morrison grubbered through for a flying Perrett.

Pirates skipper Bart Leach crashed over just before half-time to make it 26-14 at the break.

When Nick McCrohan then crossed early in the second half the difference was back to five and there was a sense of dejavu to the minor semi-final two years ago when Pirates clawed their way back from 15-nil down to break the Red Devils' hearts.

But Perrett pushed their advantage back out to 10 after a good break from Newcombe from within their half.

Going down to 14, it became about muscling up and trusting in their defence.

"We've worked pretty hard on our d (defence) this year.

"We just had to work for each other and just keep pushing through that," Newcombe said.

"We knew we were short so we just had to lift that little bit more."

They did and were able to force Pirates into errors.

Their third straight loss, it was a similar story to the previous two weeks.

"I thought there was some big improvements we made but we lost the key moments - lineouts, getting on the front foot with some good ball and just trying to push one pass to many.

"We just let ourselves down," Pirates co-coach Mick Squires said.

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