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Seven minutes.
That was how close the Redcliffe Dolphins came to reaching the 2025 Hostplus Cup Grand Final.
They led Burleigh 16–6 deep into last year’s preliminary final at UAA Park and appeared to have done enough. Then Creedence Toia scored. Takitau Mapapalangi followed him over. Josh Rogers converted both and, almost before Redcliffe could absorb what was happening, a 10-point lead had become an 18–16 defeat.
A year later, the road to the Grand Final has brought the Dolphins straight back to Burleigh.
Only this time, the Bears are coming to Redcliffe.
Sunday’s preliminary final at Kayo Stadium is a rematch with the side that ended Redcliffe’s last season, on the ground where the Dolphins could yet play twice more before 2026 is finished. Win and they will be back there six days later for the Hostplus Cup Grand Final.
Read: Two Wins From a Premiership: Redcliffe Dolphins Are Right in the Hunt
Burleigh has been here before
There is a symmetry to the past 12 months that would have been difficult to script. Burleigh ended Redcliffe’s 2025 season, then turned up at Kayo Stadium for Dave Elliott’s first Cup game as Dolphins coach on March 8 and won 22–12.
Go further back and these clubs have been getting in each other’s way in important games for decades.
Burleigh won its first Queensland Cup premiership by beating Redcliffe 12–10 in the 1999 Grand Final. Redcliffe returned the favour at Dolphin Oval in 2003, winning 31–18 to claim the title. In 2016 they met in the decider again, this time with the Bears winning 26–16 at Suncorp Stadium.
Two years later, Redcliffe beat Burleigh 13–6 in the major semi-final on the way to its most recent Cup premiership.
It is a rivalry woven through different generations of the competition and, for Redcliffe, through a much longer history. The club was founded in 1947, entered Brisbane first grade in 1960 and won its first BRL premiership five years later with a young Arthur Beetson in the side.
More than 60 years after that breakthrough, another Redcliffe team has arrived at another September game with Burleigh standing in the way.
The six months since Round 1
That 22–12 loss to the Bears in March did not set the pattern for Redcliffe’s season. The Dolphins won 14 of their 20 regular-season games, drew one and finished second on 35 competition points, three behind minor premiers Sunshine Coast. Their +233 points differential was the best in the competition.
There were some ugly afternoons mixed in with the good ones.
Ipswich provided perhaps the clearest example in June, scoring all 28 of its points before half-time at Kayo Stadium. Redcliffe rallied after the break but lost 28–18, and captain Sheldon Pitama made no attempt to soften the assessment afterwards.
“Too many errors, too many penalties,” Pitama said. “In this competition, you can’t come out of the sheds like that.”
He also spoke about the players taking “individual accountability and team accountability” into their video review.
The significance of those comments became clearer as the season went on. Redcliffe recovered, tightened its hold on second place and arrived in September with a home qualifying final against Central Queensland.
Then, rather inconveniently, another bad first half arrived.
The Capras scored three times in the opening 32 minutes and led 16–4 at the break. This time Redcliffe found a way out. Jude Saldanha crossed early in the second half, Brent Woolf levelled the scores with 17 minutes remaining and Trai Fuller put the Dolphins ahead for the first time with his 76th-minute try.
Redcliffe won 20–16 and, instead of playing sudden-death football last weekend, had the luxury of watching Burleigh survive a 12–10 scrap with Townsville.
A few familiar faces know how close is close
The qualifying final carried another milestone. It was Pitama’s 150th Cup appearance, all of them in Redcliffe colours.
Dave Elliott described him beforehand as “a stalwart of the club”, revealing that when the playing group was asked to choose its captain at the start of the year, about 90 per cent nominated Pitama.
Sam Elliott has his own reason for understanding what this stage of the season can mean.
He played 11 Cup games for Redcliffe in 2022, including the Grand Final loss to Norths, before eventually joining the Devils. In 2024 he was on the other side when Norths beat Redcliffe 34–20 in another Grand Final at Kayo Stadium.
When the forward returned to Redcliffe for 2026, he did not pretend the old result had been forgotten. “I feel like there’s unfinished business,” he said earlier this season.
There has been quite a bit of that around Redcliffe lately.
The Dolphins were Grand Finalists in 2022 and again in 2024. Last season was very different: they were ninth late in the campaign before four straight wins carried them all the way to Burleigh and that 16–6 lead with seven minutes remaining.
This year there has been no late scramble. Second place brought a home qualifying final, the win over the Capras brought a weekend off, and now the preliminary final comes to Redcliffe as well.
Read: Talobilla Park Set to Become Peninsula Sports Hub in Kippa-Ring
Burleigh comes back into view
There will be time before Sunday to examine the team lists, the match-ups and what Redcliffe needs to do differently from that opening-round meeting in March.
For now, there is enough in how the two clubs arrived here.
Burleigh has been on both sides of some important pages in Redcliffe’s Cup history: Grand Finals in 1999, 2003 and 2016, the 2018 finals series and those extraordinary closing minutes last September.
Then came Round 1 this year. Now comes Sunday.
The winner advances to the September 26 Grand Final, also at Kayo Stadium. For Redcliffe, that means a season that began at home against Burleigh could reach its defining weekend at home against Burleigh, with another game on the same ground waiting six days later.
After several Septembers spent getting painfully close, Redcliffe has earned another chance to see where this one leads.
Published 16-September-2026
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