RIVERINA FOOTBALL LEAGUE
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JUSTIN Rynehart will seek a fairytale finish to his return to Wagga Tigers in the reserve grade grand final on Sunday.
Rynehart left Wagga Tigers for a decade where he enjoyed two senior and one reserve grade premiership with Farrer League club The Rock-Yerong Creek.
He returned to Robertson Oval this season as reserve grade coach and will lead Tigers out in Sunday's premiership decider against Mangoplah-Cookardinia United-Eastlakes.
Rynehart has loved the move back to Tigers.
"It's been really exciting," Rynehart said.
"There's only Horse (Andrew Priest) and Pappy (Damien Papworth) who I've played with previously.
"There is a lot of new faces but a lot of the old blokes are still the same, which is great.
"It's been good to play with a lot of new blokes.
"Probably the most enjoyable thing has been seeing guys who started in the twos, end up playing first grade."
Tigers will welcome back Nathan Cooke, Josh Larwood and Ben Farrell from the senior team that lost to Coolamon last Saturday week.
Other important Tigers players include Nathan McDonald, Jake Gunning, Andrew Priest and Paul Battenally.
Tigers will meet a rampant MCUE team that has knocked off Griffith, Turvey Park and Coolamon to make the grand final.
Rynehart is not exactly sure what to expect.
"We don't know, we only played them twice during the year and haven't played them in finals," Rynehart said.
"We expected to play them deep at some stage though.
"We're going into it close enough to full-strength.
"We've got a good mix of a few older blokes and then mostly young guys, and they're going to be the difference if we win or lose."
The battle of the ruckmen will be influential on Sunday with MCUE's Sam Balding to go up against Tigers' Brad Ryan.
MCUE will look towards Adam Skow, Shaun Bennett and Zac Williams for big games.
The Goannas are playing in their seventh straight reserve grade grand final.
They won the 2008 and 2009 premierships before losing the past four grand finals.
Reserve grade grand final
WAGGA TIGERS v MANGOPLAH-CUE
Wagga Tigers
B: J Rynehart, C Lucas, T Halse
HB: D Papworth, P Battenally, N Cooke
C: L Gregurke, J Larwood, B Farrell
HF: J Gunning, S Bourchier, J Hodge
F: M Etchells, A Priest, W Bartlett
Foll: B Ryan, N McDonald, J Wolf
Inter: H Bance, M Connolly, L Rynehart, B Crawford
Emerg: R Colvin, L Vicary, D Abblitt, J Dudley, A Dailey
MCUE
B: J Melton, A McCormack, K Breust
HB: S Bennett, J Raves, L Davis
C: Z Williams, A Skow, A Pleming
HF: M Dean, J Millar, M Byrne
F: J Tancredi, S Griffin, T Cohalan
Foll: S Balding, D Rogers, P Maher
Inter (from): G Bruce, N Lawson, B Roberson, J Curran, C Huthwaite, B Sanbrook, T Toohey, W Lloyd
