The Spacemen were ravaged by injuries in last Saturday’s major semi-final yet still came within a whisker of defeating Dubbo CYMS, falling just short 18-16 on the Fishies home turf.

Parkes lost arguably their player of the season Sam Dwyer to a broken thumb after only 10 minutes, following the loss of back-rower Hayden Robinson who suffered a shoulder injury.

To compound the Spacemen’s injury woes, centre Michael Mitchell limped from the field on the hour mark.

Despite this, The Spacemen led CYMS until three minutes to go and were unlucky not to get the win.

Dubbo stood resolute and they will now enjoy a week off as the Cowboys take on the depleted Spacemen to decide who will meet CYMS in the decider on September 6.

The Spacemen have defeated Wellington on all three occasions in the Group XI competition this season, however, they head into Sunday’s do-or-die encounter with a reshuffled side.

“We have a great bunch of young guys coming through who will help fill the vacant spots,” Spacemen captain-coach Dennis Moran said.

“Under 18s players like Jesse Parker, Ethan McKellar and Billy Burns have been involved with the side and played most of the game against CYMS.

“I have every confidence they will continue to do just as good a job for us as they have done,” he said.

Parker will take over the fullback role from the injured Dwyer with George Wright coming onto the wing.

Key to Parker’s performance as custodian will be his ability to get to opposition kicks on the full and turn defence into attack.

He has shown blistering speed on the wing in earlier games and this should help him at the back.

While disappointed with last Saturday’s result, Moran said there were positives to take from the match also.

“We let ourselves down a bit at both the start and the end of the match,” Moran said.

“We made a slow start which had us 14-0 down.

“CYMS dominated the ruck which allowed them to have good go forward while limiting ours.

“We were under pressure getting out of our own 20.

“We were forced to kick from deep in our half instead of putting them under pressure with kicks deep into their area.

“We did not help ourselves with poor ball handling.

“Our second half defence was excellent and the fact we went so close to winning despite not playing our best is very encouraging.

“We learned the hard way that you must play for the full 80 minutes, especially in finals.

“If we can improve on these areas, we will be in with a good chance come Sunday.

“Hopefully we can get the win and our League Tag girls can get up over Nyngan to have two sides in the grand final.

“There is a lot of work to do before that though,” he said.

Parkes team lists appear on page 46.