It was a long day for the local team, and despite losing a key player early in the tournament, they still went on to beat three out of the five teams they faced.

"We topped our pool after beating Nelson Bay, the Wanderers and Hamilton B," coach Jared Fuller told the Argus.

"Unfortunately, we lost our captain Rich Roberts to injury early in the day, which was a massive blow to the team because he is such an influential player."

After a narrow loss to Lakes Rugby in their fourth game, the Cannonballs had still done enough to make it to the semi-final where they hoped to taste victory in finals football.

"We went through to the semi-final against Bungendore," Fuller said.

"It was close, but we went down by two tries, the team just ran out of steam in the end; the game was within our grasp, but we just couldn't quite get it done.

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"I'd say our biggest issue was maintaining possession, the team has great players, and when they get the ball they can do amazing things, we just need to work a bit harder to take that next step, which we are capable of doing."

While their finals hopes at the Hamilton Sevens didn't quite come to fruition, Fuller is still very happy with how the team performed in only their second year of competition.

"Jesse Douglas was an absolute stand out on the day, he ran hard, tackled hard and his level of fitness meant that he played lots of minutes throughout the day," he said.

"Ethan Thompson and Josef Barber were also fantastic and got through a tonne of work.

"The Cannonballs Indigenous side has made the finals in every tournament we have participated in, which is a credit to the players."

At the moment, the team is still looking for their next outing, but Fuller is confident the sevens program which was designed to unearth local talent will continue well into the future.

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