The Bears were promoted from D-grade but were a class above the Cobras and Clarence Town coach Peter Maytom expected them to be promoted to B-grade at least when the Newcastle and Hunter Rugby League meets this week to finalise up-gradings.

Kotara and Kearsley’s promotion from C to B-grade were the only mooted re-gradings which proceeded on the weekend.

The re-grading of Kearsley seems to be appropriate with the Crushers credible 32-16 losers against top-two opponent West Wallsend.

“Kotara will definitely go to B-grade. They are a good side,” Maytrom said.

“I suppose there are times when you could say ‘you should have made a better effort’, but they just had us so disorganised because they were just so quick. We couldn’t recover.

“It was a game when they were way, way classier than us.

“We were on the back foot all day. Our boys made no impression on them, I don’t think we even looked like scoring.

“It wasn’t as if we were clumsy and were dropping the ball all the time, it was just that they had the ball all the time. We had to try and stop them but it was very rarely that we could.

“Even when we had the ball we were making no impression, they just bashed us.

“If you looked at our stats the biggest loss would have been in miss-tackles. We completed our sets but couldn’t make ground.”

The NHRL was to meed on Monday night to discuss re-gradings and finalise a new draw on Tuesday and Maytrom said he expected Dungog to be promoted to B-grade.

He said the most important consideration should not be on the equalising the number of teams in each grade, but ensuring the gradings are equal.

“Trying to make 10 teams in four grades is not the go. It’s to make four grades of equal ability. It doesn’t matter if there is only eight in C-grade and 12 in D-grade as long as they are equal in ability,” he said.

Maytrom said he believed up to four teams including the Cobras may be dropped back to D-grade.