At this stage last year at the same venue and against the same rival, Bulldogs posted an 11-8 victory to advance to the grand final.

Since then Bulldogs have not lost to Emus, winning their two regular season matches (23-7, 18-12) and the qualifying final (12-5).

Yet Goninan knows another win over the greens will be hard earned.

“Last year we played Emus and it was at Forbes as well, so hopefully we get the same result,” he said.

“It’s going to be another tough game. Emus is a very strong club, they’ve got their second grade side already into the grand final, so I’m assuming their reserve bench will be strong as well.

“We all know it’s going to be a tough game and you’ve got to play each game on its merits.”

From what he saw in the qualifying final a fortnight ago, the Bathurst coach is confident his side can once more beat Emus. However, there are things from that performance which can be improved.

“We came off that game two weeks ago knowing we left a lot of points out there. Even though we won 12-5, we walked off knowing we left a decent amount of points out there with missed penalty goals and dropped balls,” Goninan said.

“We’ve only got to convert half of those and the scoreline blows out a lot more.”

Hooker Jock Grant injured his shoulder in the 31-8 loss against Orange City last week and will not take part in any further rugby this season, but the experienced Keith Cox will replace him.

Goninan is keen to beat Emus and get another shot at Orange City in the grand final.

“The tries that they scored against us were quite soft, we missed a lot of first-up tackles, and then in the second half it was only 5-0 and we dropped a lot of ball in their territory,” he said.

“So we took a lot of positives out of that game … and if we can get through this week’s hurdles then I think we’ll be more than confident going into the grand final.”

Saturday’s preliminary kicks off at 12.10pm