One man who is certainly hoping it is not the end for the Jets is their captain coach Ben Wellington.

With a 12-nil lead and less than 20 minutes to play, the Jets looked to be in a great position to knock of the Shellharbour City Sharks in last week’s qualifying final.

But the Sharks came home strong, snatching a 16-12 win to take them into the major semi, leaving the Jets in a sudden death situation this weekend.

Wellington said the loss to the Sharks is one of the toughest he has ever had.

“To be honest, I thought we had it,” he said.

“Then we had a bit of a momentum change, we went backwards and we couldn’t recover.

“You can’t afford to do that in these sorts of games and they got us for it.”

While the loss was hard to take, they are still in the hunt and now need to shift their focus to Gerringong.

But Wellington does not want his side to completely forget the loss to the Sharks as they need to learn from their mistakes.

“We can take a lot of positives out of it; it was one of our best defensive efforts.

“It was a really, really physical game.

“I think we were both a bit battered and bruised at the end of it and that takes a lot out of you. But I think we’ll be better for it, we can take out what we did wrong.”

The Jets have had a win and two narrow losses over the Sharks this year, while they had a draw with minor premiers Warilla-Lake South.

These results are a clear indication they can match it with the top two teams, but their track record against the Lions doesn’t make for very positive reading.

Although they finished higher on the table, the Jets went down convincingly to the Lions in both of their meetings during the regular season.

It was 50-20 at Nowra Showground in round six and they faired marginally worse in round 16 at Michael Cronin Oval where Lions won 54-18.

So why is it they struggle against Gerirngong?

“That’s a good question,” Wellington said.

“I think it’s a combination of things.

“Our track history against them isn’t that good.

“They’ve had some pretty easy wins over us in recent years.”

Wellington admitted the Lions have definitely had the wood on them, but said it is a completely different game now that they are in the semi-finals.

“You’ve got to go in thinking you can win or you’re beat before you start,” he said. 

“We need to have the belief that we can win. It’s a different game and there’s more at stake.”

Win, lose, or draw, the one thing Wellington is certain of is leaving nothing on the field.

“We’re treating it as our last game, so there’s no point walking away saying shoulda, woulda, coulda,” he said.

“If the boys go out there and throw everything at them, we give ourselves every chance.

“We want to make up for the missed opportunity, the season is one the line for both teams and I think it should be a really good game.”