The Tigerettes were down by eight points with less than six minutes to go, but two tries in the last five minutes broke the Chicks’ hearts.

The Tigerettes are now excited to face a rematch with the Bombala High Heelers in Sunday’s grand final at Bega. 

“Bombala have been the benchmark team all year and we are excited to be playing them in the grand final,” spokeswoman Tamika Millard said. 

Despite a loss to the Heelers in the major-semi, Ms Millard is backing the Tigerettes. 

“We have great attacking combinations, strong defence and a never give up attitude, we will be doing our best to bring home the trophy.” 

Forged from the coming together of the Tigerettes and the Hot Doggies, the combined Tigerettes have gone from strength to strength. 

“The bond between us girls has been great and we have became a lot stronger and closer throughout the season,” Ms Millard said.  

Officials said the Chicks had started the stronger team last weekend, getting the early points on the board. 

Joccoaa Rogers went straight through the defensive line. She found a support runner in Jacinta Dummett, who had too much speed for the fullback.

The first-half turned into an arm-wrestle from that point, but the Chicks continued to dominate field position. The Tigerettes struggled to get out of their own end of the field, but did enough in defence to keep Bega at bay.

Eden had their best chance of the half in the last 30 seconds, as Tamika Millard picked off a pass deep in attack, and was only thwarted by a desperate tag from Madison Parbery. The Tigerettes couldn’t capitalise on the late chance, as the half-time score remained 6-0 to the Chicks.

The start of the second half was a mirror-image of the first, as the Tigerettes started dominating proceedings.

Their pressure on the Chicks’ line paid off after five minutes, as Emma Flanigan scooped up a deflected pass to score in the corner.

The Chicks settled, and started to look dangerous again as Ali Ringland and Joccoaa Rogers led them ably around the field.

They looked home and hosed with 10 minutes to go, as Madison Parbery scored a fantastic individual try to give them a 12-4 lead.

Parbery took a goal-line dropout, and outpaced Eden’s defence to score right under the black dot.

However, Eden hit straight back through Jacqueline Keevil-Scott after an inch-perfect cross-field kick from Kiarna Mitchell.

Mitchell wasn’t done there, as she set up the match-winning try with an inside ball to Ebony Pointon. 

The Tigerettes feature in the league-tag grand final that will run from 10am at the Bega Recreation Ground on Sunday.