The young Darwin Brothers pull together to beat Palmerston Raiders in NRL NT preliminary final

A DARWIN Brothers outfit full of self-belief sealed a 26-18 win over minor premiers Palmerston Raiders in the preliminary final of the NRL NT A-grade premiership, booking the side’s first grand final since 2017

Tyrone Nona was a standout in the halves for the Darwin Brothers in the preliminary final against Palmerston Raiders. Picture: GLENN CAMPBELL

A DARWIN Brothers outfit full of self-belief sealed a 26-18 win over minor premiers Palmerston Raiders in the preliminary final of the NRL NT A-grade premiership, booking the side’s first grand final since 2017.

Brothers had the ascendency early finding their way through the Palmerston defence to see Tyrone Nona over for the opening score.

Meanwhile, Palmerston, who went through the regular season undefeated, struggled to find a foothold in the opening half with handling errors costing the side on attack.

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The Brethren took full advantage of these errors and soon found themselves with another score when half back Thomas Clarke finished off another team effort on the right wing.

But a scrum on the 20-metre line gave Raiders’ Brad Hansen the chance to go from dummy half splitting the Brothers defence and scoring the first for his side.

Though it was the Brothers who got the final say of the half with Caleb Niki booting a penalty to put his side ahead by more than a score.

The Brethren kept coming in the second half with Raiders’ full back and captain Alex Johnson covering well on more than one occasion until he found himself forced off with a finger injury.

And to add insult to injury it was Brothers that scored next some 10 minutes later with Clarke chipping over the Palmerston defence to feed the ball to captain and scorer Aaron Pollard.

The minor premiers didn’t give up even with the game and the chance at a grand final quickly escaping them and after a number of phases on the attack Blake Fletcher found his way over.

And then they struck again with Will Beers striking the ball perfectly for it to sit dead in the try zone waiting for the winger to touch down.

But it was not enough with Brothers getting the final say when Niki ran over the line to seal the game in the last minute.

“It’s awesome, we’re a young team and everyone wrote us off but we just believed in each other and that’s what got us over the line in the end,” Pollard told the Sunday Territorian.

“For the past few weeks we’ve been talking control, compete and composure and our halves Tyrone (Nona) and Tommy (Clarke) particularly control the game really well despite still being teenagers.

“Nick Sauer our prop was another massive standout. He played the full 80 minutes as he has done the past few weeks, he’s solid, he’s fit and he competes. And then there’s the experience of Leon Rotumah.

“Now we will enjoy the win, recovery starts on Sunday and then we start fresh again for training over the week for the final.”

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Brothers will face Litchfield in the grand final next week.