THE 2014 season was shaping up to be an exciting season for us with a number of new and returning faces taking the field.
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With this boost in numbers, we decided to start pre-season training early in the year and really lift the intensity.
Firstly to match the College sides in fitness, but also to build an atmosphere of dedication and commitment. This approach was greeted positively by the playing group with numbers increasing from week to week despite the intensity of training sessions.
From a coach’s perspective, good commitment to training has allowed us to work hard on both the finer skills of rugby, such as the breakdown and defensive patterns, along with trying to build combinations and game plan’s.
To kick start the year we travelled to Yamba for a trial game against the Buccaneers.
This helped us to start developing these combinations and improve match fitness, but also served as a bonding trip to bring the team together as a group.
Our regards to Sid Brummell for organising this trip and the win against Yamba was the start of our 10 game winning streak, which included a 40 nil win against Robb College and a 43 nil win against Guyra, both in front of big home crowds.
These wins came off the back of good numbers and enthusiasm at training along with having full 22 man squads each Saturday. Weekly strong performers during this period were newcomers, Matthias Wann at outside centre, Billy Hartman at flanker and Cameron Amos at halfback, along with club stalwarts Fergus McIntosh and Ranald Burridge.
We saw a decline in numbers around July, partly due to the cold weather, but also likely due to some complacency creeping in; our first two losses occurred during this period. In the last few weeks the dedication has returned and this has been reflected on the field.
Unfortunately we lost arguably one of the best players in the entire zone, Sam Price, through injury however due to the depth of talent available this year we have been able to cover for this loss.
Recently Adam Morris, Tom Coldham and Tom Benton have been standout performers and are going into the grand final in good form. The Semi final proved that we can both come from behind to win and that we can adapt our style during the game.
After being down at half time we changed our style, keeping the ball in tight and controlling the game through our forwards. Through this we were able to starve Albies of possession and field position, and the win came off the back of that.
This weekend we will be taking on an experienced Armidale Blues side that have matched us all season. From the three games this year we have had a three-point win, a draw and a two-point loss; meaning that from 210 minutes of rugby only 1 point separates the two sides.
The Blues main attacking weapons will be their two centres, so we will have to focus a lot of our attention there. Our forward pack will be looking to get a roll on, especially in the latter stages of the game.
Our backrow has been unmatched this year and we will be looking to them for some go forward. We also have a lot of try scorers in the backs so that’ll be where a lot of the points will likely come from.
I would like to thank all the supporters that have turned up all year, but especially on the weekend in Armidale. We easily had the most vocal supporters of all four games and it served as inspiration to win that game.
We are hoping for a good crowd this weekend to see us finish off what has been a great season.