CLARENCE Town Cobras men’s team travelled away last Saturday to take on Waratah Mayfield on their “Old Boys Day”.
A win for either side would decide the outright competition leader as both teams were tied at the top on 14 competition points.
A mistake by the Cheetahs coming off their line in the first set of the game gave Clarence Town early possession and after several strong runs by the Cobras forwards, second rower Hunta Saunders spun and crashed his way over next to the posts to give Blake Birch an easy conversion and a somewhat unexpected 6-0 lead after only four minutes.
The try gave Claro momentum and just six minutes later they were in again courtesy of a nice backline movement which saw centre Jarod Rits charge onto a pass out wide to cross in the corner.
The difficult sideline conversion attempt went wide of the post although it left the Cobras with a handy 10-0 lead.
At this point Claro lost the services of hooker Jake Ritchie which in turn caused a reshuffle and to some extent a little disorganisation.
With the versatile Willie Simpson now into dummy half the Cobras eventually found their rhythm again and at the 29th minute mark halfback Blake Birch took things into his own hands and scored a classy individual try under the posts to have Claro well on top at this stage, pushing their lead out to 16-0.
All Claros’ outside backs were doing a great job resting some of the workload for their forwards and after a tremendous carry from winger Dane Laman the Cobras were in again out wide.
Jarod Rits scored his second try for the afternoon and his fifth in two weeks to give Claro a useful 20-0 lead at the halftime break.
The second half couldn’t have started too much worse for the Cobras.
In the space of five minutes after the restart they lost blockbusting prop Ben Bradley as well as halfback and captain Blake Birch for the remainder of the game, causing further positional changes to the team.
Already without regular five eight Brock Hunt the Cobras seemed to be a little rattled and disorganised and the Cheetahs took full advantage to cross for a try out wide.
An unsuccessful conversion left the score at 20-4 in favour of Claro.
It took a determined run by lock forward Jock Potter who had continually probed the opposition defence all game to crash over under the posts and keep the Cobras on track.
Fisher, taking over the goal kicking duties, slotted the conversion to push Claro’s lead out to 26-4.
Prop Sam Dunn and backrower Hunta Saunders had toiled hard for the Cobras all game but with twelve minutes to go Waratah hit back with a converted try to bring them back into the game at 26-10.
Claros Willie Simpson, originally filling into the hooker role and now playing at halfback, hit back immediately with his own piece of individual skill to dummy close to the line and sliced through defenders to score next to the posts and once again stretch the lead to 32-10.
With just five minutes remaining it must be said that the position changes had taken its toll on the Cobras as they seemed totally disorganised and communication seemed to be lost, resulting in the Cheetahs running in two late tries to give them unneeded confidence and scoreline respectability with the final score being 32-20.
Although Claro were dominant for the majority of the game there were enough flaws towards the end of the match which will need to be addressed if they are to continue to be a force towards the end of the competition.
Just the same, a strong win away from home in front of a large opposition old boys crowd.
Our Ladies League Tag team had a big weekend firstly travelling to Glendale on Saturday and unluckily finding themselves on the end of a very controversial decision on fulltime which resulted in them coming away with a 10-10 draw with Claudia Watt and Shonah Lancaster scoring tries for the Cobras.
They then had to travel to Tea Gardens for an 11am game on Sunday.
Several players were outstanding for the ladies, none better than Best Attacker Ellen Maytom, Best Tagger Lara Allwood and Claudia Watt having an outstanding game at fullback for a convincing 22-0 win.
Scorers were Claudia Watt, Ellen Maytom, Izzy Broad, Jemma Walters and Caitlyn O’Brien.
The weekends’ results now see the girls sitting in second position in the competition.
Kristen Bradley is doing a fantastic job in her initial season as LLT coach.
Next week our Men 2.30pm and Women 1.10pm are home to Tea Gardens on Saturday.
Our U7s play Myall River Hawks away on Saturday at 9am.
The kids are having a wonderful season under the expert guidance of coach Laura Compton.
By Peter MAYTOM
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