Your last sentence has all of the elements for the 3 word phrase, hankir 4,3,9 (do you know what they look like in the sport of rugby?).
The phrase is an anagram of the diagonal (after completing the empty cells at either end) - 2 words 7,5.
...that refers to your initial response, hankir - I can see from your second one that you didn't really need my follow-up (I'm pretty slow on a keyboard).