Few had made Currie favourites for this tie. They had been beaten, albeit narrowly, at Fullarton earlier in the season 34-28 and, perhaps more notably, 27-17 just a little over two weeks ago, so form was firmly on Marr’s side. 

Currie had taken the lead in that encounter only for their indiscipline to be their undoing, and, although they lost Thomas Jeffery to the sin-bin, their exemplary defensive display was the bedrock to victory. 

“What a difference from a couple of weeks ago”, said a beaming Mark Cairns. 

“To lose on our own patch, in our last league game meant we were coming here. We knew it would be a hard task, and I know we’ve scored points but our defence was amazing today. 

“I think it was helpful playing a couple of weeks ago but there’s one thing coming up with a gameplan and another thing to the guys executing it. 

“It would be easy to go back to type, revert to what’s comfortable, but we had a specific gameplan today: we had high ball-in-play time, [were] really disciplined defensively, and when we had the ball we weren’t afraid to play.” 

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Although not getting on the scoresheet, winger Ryan Daley assisted one try and was heavily involved in the defensive effort with a try-saving tackle on Marr’s Jake Jacobson. 

“Ryan was class today, he’s come on to a game towards the end of the season. He struggled at the start but we know he’s a really talented player, and today he was good both sides of the ball, in particular his ability to track across and make some dominant tackles in the wide channels.” 

For Marr’s Kenny Diffenthal, it was a disappointing sequel to the previous entry in this season’s encounters with familiar foes while praising them for keeping Marr to their lowest tally at home this season. 

“We just didn’t get out the traps like we wanted to, and credit to them for that, they wanted to come out and shut us down. 
 
“It seems to be the second side to the story, we went behind when we went up there, managed to come back really strongly but, today, we went down and the heads just seemed to drop. 

“I don’t think there was any complacency at all, we knew the challenge that was ahead of us, and we just have to commend Currie. They were hurting and they’ve come out and executed a really good plan that Mark’s given them, and they were better than us on the day. 
 
“This team’s got a lot to give yet, so it all depends on how we pick ourselves up from this and move forward.”