Brisbane City beat Perth Spirit 37-26 to win NRC grand final at Ballymore
BRISBANE City are the inaugural NRC champions after beating Perth Spirit 37-26 in a close-fought grand final at Ballymore.
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“BATTLESHIP Paraka” sunk the Perth Spirit with a two-try blast that delivered Brisbane City victory in the inaugural Buildcorp National Rugby Championship grand final at Ballymore.
There have been long-range solo efforts and dazzling ball-handling to generate many of the 358 tries that have spiced the 11 weeks of this NRC roadshow around the country.
Squat prop Pettowa Paraka, 20, barely covered five metres in total for his two tries on Saturday night but the single-minded, leg-pumping intensity that generated both perfectly summed up his side’s pack dominance in the 37-26 decider.
The dazzle came late from replacement Brisbane winger Junior Laloifi who scorched 50m down the sideline and beat three cover defenders with a super final try that had the boisterous crowd of 7889 fans on their feet.
Paraka’s 118kg are spread over a frame just 1.79m tall which gives him the build of a broad rainforest tree from near his timber village of Baiyer in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
The former Southport School boarder was a powerful force in the scrum shunt for the early penalty try. His first try when he speared off the side of a driving maul from a lineout wrestled back a 24-21 lead just before half-time and his second of similar style midway through the second half gave Brisbane a 29-21 edge.
“It’s a great feeling to win and to just get the eye-opening experience of knowing what a professional environment is like throughout the NRC,” Easts’ former Australian Under-20s prop said.
His upbeat vibe and improvement is exactly what the NRC was introduced for as a development pathway.
Former Wallaby flanker Liam Gill was a standout man-of-the-match with his workrate, skill to run, off-loading and pick-and-go try that started the night rolling.
For Perth, tall fullback Dane Haylett-Petty was superb and his leap above Brando Va’aulu to pluck a Zack Holmes kick out of the sky for a try was worthy of the West Coast Eagles highlights reel.
“We fired up there in the pack. We had to if we wanted to shut the Perth backs out of the game,” Brisbane skipper Dave McDuling said before getting his mitts on the “Toast Rack”, the curiously-shaped NRC trophy.
For Gill, there was something more important for Queensland rugby as a whole after a lame Reds season: “A trophy is awesome and just that feeling of finishing off a big game when it was in the balance.”
The NRC’s 11-week run around the country has been warmly welcomed, well-promoted, a curiosity or ignored depending on where the games have been played. Most in rugby agree it has been entirely worthwhile and overdue to fill a void.
To draw 7889 fans to the inaugural grand final on Saturday night at Ballymore is a success by any measure and kudos to the Queensland Rugby Union for doing as much as they did to promote it.
There are 12 silver plaques for winning teams already glued on the strange-looking NRC trophy as a sort of positive look to a long future. If indeed the competition is still going in 2025, it will have been the birthplace of several Wallaby careers for sure.
Gracious yet disappointed Perth skipper Sam Wykes didn’t shy away from where the grand final was settled.
“As a pack we let ourselves down. The Brisbane City scrum was too dominant,” Wykes said.
“We could get no roll on and were on the backfoot all night which meant we set no platform for the very good backs we have.”
On a wider note, Wykes was delighted with where the NRC had ended up.
“To play a final in front of nearly 8000 vocal, loud fans being supportive of their team was terrific,” Wykes said.
“It was a show of the parochial following there has to be in this competition.”
Perth poked their heads in front for just three minutes on the night. At the 33-minute mark, halfback Ian Prior cleverly used referee Rohan Hoffman as a legal obstruction to snipe from the ruckbase and send try-machine hooker Robbie Abel over for his sixth try of the NRC and a short-lived 21-16 lead.
BRISBANE CITY 37 (P Paraka 2, L Gill, J Laloifi, pen try; J McIntyre 4 conv) bt
PERTH SPIRIT 26 (D Haylett-Petty, D Tavita, R Abel, S Rasolea tries; Z Holmes 3 conv)
Replay all the action in our NRC grand final match blog below!
Originally published as Brisbane City beat Perth Spirit 37-26 to win NRC grand final at Ballymore
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