Bangalow Rugby Club

The Mighty 8’s were down a player on Friday nights first game against the WAR Red outfit with the absence of Angus who had a pressing engagement at the Lismore lantern parade and dinosaur exhibition.

A man down did not deter the Mighty 8’s.

The game was played with commitment and enthusiasm as the Mighty 8’s took charge from the first kick off.

Young Keelin showed that he has been paying attention at training as he covered the wing position and only came into the melee when he realised that his teammates were hurting. Keelin took some great passes and was quick off the mark when he ran with the ball.

Callum showed a great deal of determination with straight running and twisting on a five cent piece as he carved it up the middle.

Zahi had only one thing on his mind all night…. score a try. At times the ref had to call him back to the mark such was his enthusiasm.

Finn called his personal trainer onto the paddock and took to the game with more energy than he has shown this season. Some great tags were made as Finn defended hard.

As a little side note, apparently Finn has banned his mother from kissing him good night unless she goes through the forward pack drill of “Crouch, touch, pause, engage”. How good is that.

The stand out players on the night were Ben and Will. What a combination they are playing well above their weight as they amassed try after try. Well done boys.

Poor WAR Red did not know what hit them as the Mighty 8’s continued their unbeaten run to the semis. Yes that’s right, the boys have set their sights on a finals place for 2010.

This week we play an away game against the unknown Casino side, at Casino.

Go the Bangers

The mighty under 12’s lost 19-5 to Wollongbar Red.

The score was not a true indication of the match as the 2 teams were very well matched and Bangalow actually won the 2nd half scoring a great try & keeping Wollongbar Red scoreless.

In what was a very entertaining game there were many highlights including Jordi’s pin point accurate cross field kick that was gathered in by Tommy who then ran ¾ of the length of the field to be tackled just 1 meter short of the try line. Patrick once again made some devastating runs through the heart of the opposition & Gabe continued his recent good form with some powerful tackling.

The stand out player was Darcy who seemed to be just about everywhere, making some great runs in attack as well as dominating in defense.

Congratulations to Jordi for scoring our try & his 1st ever in Rugby Union.

The team spirit was fantastic with the senior players showing plenty of encouragement to the younger players.

With our strong performance in the 2nd half I am confident that a win is not too far away!

See everyone at training on Tuesday.

Well, the under 14 team must really have offended the rugby gods … Another two players out, Lewis Erskine for the rest of the season with serious skin problems and, just before the game on Friday, Brodie Snow with a suspected (now confirmed) broken collarbone. That takes the tally to five broken bones for the season (arm, nose, foot and two collarbones), only one of which actually occurred during a game of rugby for Bangalow! With Brodie and Lewis out, Davis and Lachlan still injured and Carl away we were down to 16 players, including our three under 13s, and we didn’t have a complete front row. In the interests of avoiding further injuries we asked if the scrums could be uncontested, which was agreed to by the referee and the Casino assistant coach.

As usual we started a bit slowly, putting ourselves under some pressure with some handling errors and lack of intensity at the breakdown. We then recovered our composure a little and a try to Justice Hamnett was converted by Doug Jarvis. Some more patchy play gave the persistent Casino side a chance to score an unconverted try in the corner and when they managed a second unconverted try late in the second half we were down 10 points to 7 and needed to step up a notch to recover the lead. This was just the incentive the team needed and we crossed the line three more times – once when Jake was held up, once when Rory dropped the ball in goal, and once, finally, when Jaiden went over for the winning try.

With yet another conversion from Doug ‘Golden Boot’ Jarvis, we limped off with a 14 – 10 win. There were good performances from Angus at halfback, Christian in the forwards, and Rory making some penetrating runs from inside centre.

The final comment on the sort of season we’re having came after the final whistle, when the Casino coach (who had arrived part way through the game) argued that we will have to forfeit because we asked for uncontested scrums from the start of the game. We await the outcome on that. Fortunately it shouldn’t affect our ability to make it to the semi finals in 4th position on the ladder.