But two late tries, the second deep in injury time, was enough for the Greens to snatch a 19-15 victory over Lake Macquarie and bring a smile to the face of Gill.

Replacement halfback Ed Clifton sparked the revival.

The home side trailed 15-7 with 10 minutes on the clock when Clifton darted down the short side from a scrum, drew the Roos winger and fired a pass to Ethan Fowles, who raced 15 metres to score.

Then, with time up, Clifton scooted away from the base of a ruck, stepped inside Jordan Leota and made an angled run towards the tryline. He was felled from behind but popped a pass as he went to ground which was picked up by Lachlan Milton. The lock carried two Roos across the line and somehow managed to get the ball down beneath a stack of bodies.

Lake Macquarie protested vehemently to referee Nick Gaal after the try was awarded and centre Ray Alo was sent from the field. At full-time Lake Macquarie captain Marlon Solofuti spoke at length with Gaal.

"It was a frustrating afternoon," Gill said. "Lake Macquarie slowed the game right down. In the first half, there was 14 minutes of footy played. Our execution in attack wasn't working for us. Our timing was out, there was no cohesion. It was stop-start. We needed to change the way we attacked. Eddie did that. Once we put some phases together we started to do some damage."

The win moved the Greens to 48 points, a point behind third placed Maitland, who went down to Hamilton 47-29.

"It was an important win but also costly in that we didn't get a bonus point," Gill said. "The boys showed a bit of character. We have a lot of blokes out with injury. It was a pretty young side - Eli McCulloch was captain - and it took them 80 minutes to work out how to put them away."

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