A grand final date with Wentworthville awaits Newtown after the Jets survived a late scare to down St George Illawarra 22-20 in their Canterbury Cup preliminary final on Sunday.
Newtown, partner club of the Cronulla Sharks, shot out to a 22-6 lead at Jubilee Stadium before the Dragons roared home to set up a nervous finish.
But the Jets hung on in front of about 3,000 fans at Kogarah to advance to their second grand final in as many seasons.
They will hope to go one better than last year when Newtown went down 18-12 to Canterbury. The Jets will take on the Magpies at Bankwest Stadium, with former Parramatta captain Tim Mannah to lead Wentworthville.
But Newtown will have plenty of NRL firepower of their own thanks to the Sharks.
The Jets feature a number of Cronulla-contracted players including Ronaldo Mulitalo, Sione Katoa, Blayke Brailey, Scott Sorensen, Jayson Bukuya, Billy Magoulias and Will Kennedy, who signed a one-year contract extension with the Sharks last week.
The victory extended Newtown's impressive second half of the season, having finished seventh on the table.
The Jets eliminated Mounties in the first week of the finals before sneaking home against North Sydney last week.
That set up the grand final qualifier against minor premiers the Dragons, with the Jets keeping their good run going as they won their third elimination final in a row.
Newtown had lost captain Jack Williams and winger Aaron Gray to injury in the lead up to the match but started strongly regardless, with Mulitalo barging over from a short Brailey pass.
The Dragons had plenty of NRL class of their own, with recent first grade debutant Tristan Sailor touching down out wide to level the score.
Katoa then scored twice, pushing the Jets out to a 16-6 lead at half-time.
Siosifa Talakai's try five minutes into the second half looked to have secured Newtown's passage to the grand final but St George Illawarra refused to quit.
Sailor scored his second try five minutes later and it was game on when Patrick Kaufusi crossed for the Dragons with 10 minutes to play.
Steve Marsters scored again for St George Illawarra four minutes later to see the Dragons trail by two points, with Newtown holding on to secure the win and progress to the decider.
Wentworthville have a fairy tale run of their own going, having finished eighth. The Magpies downed second-placed South Sydney 35-10 in the other preliminary final.
"It's a nice feeling [to make the grand final]," Jets captain Sorensen told nswrl.com.au.
"We know we've got a real nice group of boys here and everyone really enjoys each other's company as well and really enjoy playing with each other so it's pretty special.
"As you can hear out here all the support we've got out here is special and we're very grateful for all the support of the Newtown faithful, the boys really enjoy it.
"The last fortnight we've missed the jump from the kick-off and had to chase our result so today we wanted to start fast and know that we can start fast.
"The result is a little bit closer than what we'd like but we got the job done.
"The big thing for us was getting back into the grind of things so in the first half we just grinded it out and got a few points.
"That's all we needed to do in the second half but they scored a few tries. [We just had to] kick down to the corners and 'D' up and let the result take care of itself."
