Local interest in the Tarsha Gale Cup grand final centres around the Milton Ulladulla Bulldogs' connection.
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The Illawarra Steelers will play the Newcastle Knights in tomorrow's [Saturday April 27] grand final and the Bulldogs have two players in the rugby league squad.
Local representative Makayla Mcfayden will pack down in the second row, while Bianca Jones will be out to make an impact from the interchange bench.
The match will be played at CommBank Stadium, Sydney with kick off at 1.30pm.
Well known Bulldogs' stalwart, Chey Hatch, will also have a key role to play in the grand final.
Chey has been apart of the Tarsha Gale staff and is one of the trainers.
The undefeated Steelers go into the match as favourites.
Having secured the minor premiership and a week off, the Steelers are fresh off a 26-4 win over the Sharks.
Steelers head coach Courtney Crawford spoke to St George Illawarra Dragons media recently and said she was encouraged by her side's "mature" performance against the Sharks in their opening finals clash.
"It was definitely a good performance from the girls," Crawford said.
"The most pleasing part was definitely our defence. We spoke about going after them defensively and working hard for each other and we definitely did that. We limited their attacking opportunities and to concede just four points in a semi final is quite impressive.
"After having two weeks off, we were probably a bit clunky in attack but, to the girls' credit, they stuck to the system and stayed patient and we got the result. I thought it was a really mature performance."
Crawford says that, despite the big occasion this weekend, the messaging throughout the week has remained consistent.
"The messages have stayed the same this week," she said.
"We have to make sure we execute the basics really well and focus on trusting our systems that have gotten us here. It's really important that, as a group, we enjoy the week.
"We've worked extremely hard to get ourselves in this position and these opportunities don't come around very often, so it's definitely something we need to enjoy."
