By MARK CASHMAN

The King’s School are the NSW GPS champions for 2020 after their brilliant 43-19 win over St Joseph’s College at Hunters Hill on Wednesday.

King’s went into the game between the two undefeated teams in the competition talking about the importance of their defence and that is what laid the foundations for a six tries to three victory.

Joeys started the game brightly and held the whip hand on the possession front enabling them to make several promising raids in the early minutes.

But the longer the match went the more King’s came into the contest with their midfield defence not enabling the normal free flowing Joeys game to come together.

In the eighth minute King’s scored the first try of the game – which was duly converted to make the score 7-0 – and were in a matter of minutes later to get out to a 14-0 lead.

They then continued to put the pressure on and scored another two tries before the break and then added a penalty goal to make the score 29-5 and seemingly with the game very much in hand.

But Joeys weren’t going to lie down and pushed their way back into the match in the first half of the second stanza with tries in the 48th and 55th minutes.

King’s weren’t to be denied though and they eventually got their hands on the ball and scored tries in the 62nd and 67th minute.

In many circles Joeys had been considered favourites going into this game but their defence and straight running wore the home side down.

It many ways it was a bizarre way to end the NSW GPS season with Covid-19 initially postponing the competition and then managing to get it back on after representations to the State Government and NSW Health.

Fittingly the Second XV, who had been beaten by Joeys earlier in the day 38-0, and many of the wider squad came on to the field to sing the school song at the end of the game and trophy presentation.

King’s last won the title in 2018 while Joeys went through 2019 undefeated.

King’s forwards coach Hugh Perrett was a happy man in the aftermath of the victory.

“That was our best performance of the year,” Perrett said.

“I thought our defence was outstanding. Joeys are best when they are able to play off front foot ball and we were able to deny them that.

“Our forwards were dominant in the middle of the field and that meant that our backs were able to get some effective line speed in defence.

“On the back of that we were able to really attack their breakdown in the wider channels and it worked quite well.

“This has been a result that has been 12 months in the making and it’s great to see the boys get some return for their efforts.”

Perrett worked with Rugby Master, James Hilgendorf, and skills coach John Warr.