The Dogs were edged out 13-12 by Wests at Ziems Park on Friday, with both finalists granted automatic entry into the state tournament that will also feature top two sides from the Newcastle and Ron Massey Cup competitions.

Wests knocked back the offer, instead choosing to focus on round one of the regular season, but Fien said his side will definitely be taking part in the state Cup.

“We definitely are. I’ve said from early in the piece that the season’s not a long one and you’ve got to start on a good note,” Fien said.

“You don’t want to be dropping games early in the season, you don’t want to be chasing your tail so the more games of footy we can get at this stage of the year, especially with round one not until late April.

“The more footy we can get now, and the more time the guys have playing with each other, the better we’ll be come round one.

Fien said he remained proud of his side’s effort despite the one-point loss, and wasn’t left ruing his play-makers’ decision to push for the try rather than the field goal late in the match.

“We had a bit of a chat about it afterwards, we could’ve taken the two at one stage as well that would’ve put us out to four,” Fien said.

“While there was a trophy on the line but it is trial footy at the end of the day. If it was a grand final we might have done things a bit differently but I was very happy with the performance.

“I thought Wests were really good, particularly in that first 20. They really turned us around, we didn’t have much footy, and it told in the end. We kept fighting and kept working hard so I’m very proud of the effort.”

Having claimed his first trophy as a head coach, Wests’ Pete McLeod said round one remained the club’s top priority, with Dapto to take up the other NSW Challenge Cup spot on offer.

“We made a call this week,” McLeod said.

“We’ve played four games in this Cup and it’s taken a lot out of us. We had seven guys unavailable to play [on Friday] with injury so we won’t be playing any further in it.

“We’ll have a week off now, we’ll enjoy that, and then there’s four weeks to go before round one at Thirroul. You don’t get a harder first-up game than that so we’re going to focus on that from here on in.”

McLeod was full of praise for his side’s win, particularly after finding themselves two points down despite a dominant first half display.

“We’ve got a young squad and they worked really hard for each other,” he said.

“We knew if we were close enough at the back-end of the game we were a chance and the boys executed that field goal really well at the end.

“We’ve got bigger challenges ahead of us but it was a good result.”