6 Blue V’s Aquinas Colts Round 9

Lost 18- 8

The morning was clean and crisp as we made our way out to Colts territory. Koby led us onto to the park as our proud captain and tried his best all game. The Colts had us on the back foot right from the kick off scoring the first points. Kane, Beau and Brayden all tackled hard and defended out wide trying to keep the Colts from breaking thru our defence. Blake, Ryan and Charlie all had hard powerful runs busting up the middle of the Colts line. Jarrod, Ryder and Zane made real efforts today in defence and supported the boys were they could. Cooper put on a show for his grandparents today with great tackles and runs scoring him “Man of the Match”. But the result wasn’t to be, the boys just weren’t listing enough to Coach Rosco today and it showed. Hopefully training will be on this week and we can get some good practice in for the weekend.

Tries – 1 Brayden Wallace 1 Beau Wallace

The Manager

U13A's V’s Cronulla-Caringbah Round 8

Won 32-4

Another great win!

Made sweeter because this side knocked us out in the semi's last year 6-0 although it should be noted that they have lost a couple of their key players from last year.

We went into this game with thirteen "A" graders for the first time in weeks.

Jack Schuetrim and Kyle McCarry from the 13B's backed us up as reserves after playing a full game in B grade and went very well.

Matheson Johns one of our centre's duly won the Man of the Match for a great performance, making some good runs and heaps of great tackles. Matt was closely followed by Josh Ridge who had another blinder and scored 3 sensational tries and won an award.

Finally Joel Collier our other centre won an award on the day, he plays tough football each week and in this game he made some good runs and was great in defence.

Well-done to all of you for such a great effort, I was again one very proud coach.

Scorers: Tries: Josh Ridge 3, James Wayland 2, Jake Wheeler 1, Goals: Bevan Gemmell 4.

U13A's V’s Gymea Round 9

Won 38-0

This was our team's best performance and win in the two years I have coached the side. We thrashed the side that has been in the Grand-Final of A grade in our age group every year since the U8's. (although they had 3 players out, I don't really care as they still had a full side with reserves)

We went into this game with our entire "A" grade squad of 15 players for the first time this year. Although Tom's leg injury was still not right and we only put him on in the last 10 minutes to see how it would go.

Josh Ridge had a blinder scoring 4 slashing tries and as a result he has been included in the Sharks Academy U13's side alongside his front row partner James Wayland.

Congratulations to both boys on making the U13 Sharks Academy Team on behalf of the entire Engadine Dragons Rugby League Club.

James "the Hitman" Wayland was also back to his best and scored a great solo try.

Josh duly won the Man of the Match for his great performance; Josh was closely followed by James who won an award.

Jake Wheeler also produced another non-stop quality game, topping the tackling count as usual, scoring a try and setting up 3 others and won an award.

As I said up front it was a great team performance and other players that excelled on the day were Ryan and Keiran Levin who from dummy half and half back guided the side around the park beautifully, and Joel Collier and Matheson Johns also had big games in their centre positions.

Well-done to all of you for such a great effort, I was again one very proud coach.

Scorers: Tries: Josh Ridge 4, James Wayland 1, Jake Wheeler 1, Joel Collier 1

Goals: Bevan Gemmell 5.

U16A V’s De La Salle Round 9

Lost 54-10

Another great effort by the boys today, again up against a very strong side who played some pretty good football.  Before the game I asked the boys to show plenty of commitment and they certainly did that.  Unfortunately the scoreboard didn’t reflect the effort we showed.  On a positive, most of their shots at goal were from out wide which says we showed a bit more heart up the middle.  However we just need to improve our defence out wide, which we will work on during the week.  Great game today from Tom O who defended well and also showed great speed and footwork to make a few breaks, which lead to a great try to Hippo.  Some great defence also came from Micky, Benny and of course Pierce who led the way as usual.  In attack Camorah led the way up front, taking plenty of hit ups and managing to pull a couple of penalties also.  Jordan looked great when he took on the line, showing plenty of speed and skill, hopefully he starts to realise the ability he has.  Duncan also looked dangerous when he ran the ball and was rewarded with a try.  Keep up the effort boys, you are certainly earning plenty of respect from everyone who watches your games.

A-Grade V’s De La Salle Round 8

Won 28-6

After three weeks away from footy due to reasons out of our control you wouldn’t have blamed the guys if they were a little bit rusty getting back into the swing of things and in particular against a quality side such as De La Salle. Well the complete opposite was the case and we probably played the best game yet for the season with all players linking up well in both defence and attack.

It’s not all good news though as we lost our ever reliable big hitting forward Nathan “Ritto” Bullock in the first hit up for the day. Nathan had to be ambulanced away with a suspected torn Hamstring from his bone. With the loss of Ritto so early in the game, you could sense the De La’s bench get a sniff of a possible victory and they went about launching everything at our boys for the next 20 odd minutes but to the credit of our side, they just battled the storm, worn them down and went about turning the momentum back into our favour. We were fortunate to hang onto a number of our A-reserves players when their team folded a few weeks back now and one such player was Viliam Napa’a. Viliam play’s first grade rugby on a Saturday and backs up again on Sunday for the Dragons. And when Ritto was carted off, Viliam moved into his position and between him and Scott Nancarrow, they both played an absolute blinder of a game. First half tries went to Matt Stubbs when he crossed over 10 minutes into the game with a nice solo effort try and the second went to Jack Fairhall who faked one of the best dummy passes to set himself up for a further  four points. With our usual kicker Mitch Neylan now gone for the season, Chad Richmond has taken over the duty and keeping up the high level of success we had with Mitch seeing us go to the half time break 12-6 up.

We got the second half away to a good start when Pat Carr made a sensational length of the field try in the first 10 minutes and with Chads boot in, we soon found ourselves with an 18-6 lead and De La having to run up hill and on the back foot. De La did make our line on a number of occasions but it was encouraging to see how well the guys scrambled together in an effort to stop them from crossing. With 8 minutes to go on the clock, Stubbsy teamed up with Jack Fairhall to put on a magnificent try. Having these young guys in the team is brilliant as they are fit, fast and talented players who never cease to impress. It was only a few minutes later when Pat scored his second try for the afternoon and sealed a very good victory for the afternoon. Chad Richmond had a good afternoon seeing him convert 4 from 5 attempts at goal and I’m sure like Mitch, is taking kicking tips from our master Ball Boy Bailey Ferguson.

Big thanks to the crowd that turned out on the Hill today to support our team as it was encouraging from our side to look over and see so many folks being entertained with some quality footy and cheering our team to victory. Much appreciated folks from all the A-Grade squad.

Tries:

X2  Pat Carr sponsored by Aquinas Colts

X1  Matt Stubbs sponsored by Century 21 Exclusive Realty

X2  Jack Fairhall sponsored by Adams Smash Repairs

Goals:

X4 Chad Richmond sponsored Tippers Cup Cakes

Field Goal:

Awards in no particular order went as follows: Matt Stubbs, David Stubbs, Chris Wood, Jack Fairhall, Scott Nancarrow, Kain Ebb, Pat Carr.