The Dungowan Cowgirls don't like to make life easy for Brianna Brown.
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The second-year coach, who is heavily pregnant, was on the sidelines for their minor semi-final clash against the Gunnedah Bulldogs, and could scarcely watch as they rebounded from 8-0 down at half time to an 18-14 victory.
"If they keep doing that to me, they'll send me into an early labour," Brown joked after the game.
The Cowgirls, who finished fourth on the ladder and struggled for consistency throughout the year, were underdogs coming into the weekend.
Both teams had players given 10 minutes on the sidelines for repeated infringements, but Brown was more frustrated by the Cowgirls try late in the first half that was disallowed.
After Daisy White and Madeline Buhagiar put Gunnedah in the lead in the first half, Paris Knox broke through five minutes into the second for Dungowan's first try of the game.
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Nautica Eather responded in kind to maintain the Bulldogs' lead, but rising star Tarnee Ingram and Lauren Daye both managed to cross, the latter with three minutes left in the game, to spur raucous celebrations from the Cowgirls faithful on the sidelines.
Overall, Brown said it was a "pretty scrappy" performance, but it was enough to get the fourth-placed side through to next weekend's preliminary final against the North Tamworth Bears.
"We dropped a lot of ball and played a bit unstructured compared to how we normally play," Brown said.
"We were lucky to win in the end, but we've just got to bring it together next week out at Moree."
Though she admitted that losing a match in which they led for the majority of the time did sting, Bulldogs captain Piper Rankmore praised her side.
"We're disappointed," Rankmore said.
"We had it right in our hands and we let it slip. But the girls worked hard, I'm really proud of them ... we've got a few of our key players out over in Ireland [for the Tag World Cup]
"So the girls stepped up and definitely worked hard today."
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