If you were to ask anyone who was at Ken Chillingworth Oval on Saturday what they thought the difference in the game was, the answer would be pretty unequivocal: Pirates' scrum.
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Sure there were other factors, but take out their scrum dominance and who knows?
As captain Conrad Starr said post-match it was a big part of swinging the momentum their way at different stages throughout what was a real arm-wrestle against a, pardon the pun, lionhearted Quirindi.
Down 21-5 at one point in the first half, it was the cornerstone as they fought their way back into the game, and a real weapon for them in eventually getting the better of the Lions 40-31.
Reminiscent of their 2017 and 2018 grand final triumphs over Walcha there was almost a sense of inevitability whenever they had a scrum that it would result in either a penalty or a try.
Even on their own feed the Lions found it tough going.
"It was a real gutsy performance today," Starr said.
"We knew Quirindi would come here with the mindset of knocking us off and we knew we had to be on top of our game.
"And credit to Quirindi, they really stuck it to us and it could have gone either way at any point in that match."
The Lions came with a real belief that they could win, and for much of the first half made the running.
Pirates opened the scoring through Ryan Witherdin, but the Lions were quick to hit back, and with their expansive and uptempo game causing a few problems for the home side kicked out to a 21-5 lead with 15 to play in the first half.
But not long after Pirates' scrum really got to work and the tide started to turn. Firstly they pushed the Lions off their own scrum about 10m out to win the ball back and score through winger Shaquille Ervine.
Then as tensions flared - not for the first or last time in the game - and Sam Avard was yellow-carded for foul play, their scrum dominance was rewarded with a penalty try to close the gap to 21-19 with two minutes remaining in the first half.
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The Lions wrested back a bit of momentum back with a penalty after the bell to Charlie Gulliver to make it 24-19 at the break.
But their advantage was quickly erased with Ervine crossing for his second after Pirates had a succession of scrum penalties. Jayden Kitchener-Waters, who put on a clinic ball in hand and with his boot, added the extras to give them the lead 26-24.
That became 33-24 a few minutes later after another scrum penalty led to a try to Sam Collett.
At that stage looking very much on the back foot, captain James Davison got the Lions back into it, cutting the difference back to two midway through the second half.
But Llewyn Rapana pushed Pirates back out to the final nine point margin with around 15 minutes to play.
Not expecting any "free rides" this season with the competition shaping up to be the tightest for a long while, Starr said they would take a lot out of grinding out the win the way that they did. Especially after being up 26-19 at one stage against Moree last week only to go down by two.
"Massively. We've got a lot of young fellas still coming through so those tough ones you learn a lot," he said.
For the Lions there was a feeling of one that got away. From the position they were in they thought they "should have won".
"We lost it ourselves to be honest," a disappointed Davison said.
"Our set piece wasn't very good, and just too many penalties.
"We were up 21-5 and just let them back in."
The scrum was a big factor in that with Pirates making a lot of "easy metres" from their "faltering scrum".
He thought Callum McIntosh and Hamish Dunbar had big games for them in the forwards along with Nick Hooley in the backs.
