The Cobar and Newtown Barwon Darling Rugby League First Grade teams had Tom Knight Memorial Oval all to themselves on Saturday after the scheduled Under 18s and League Tag matches were forfeited.
Earlier in the week the Cobar Under 18s received notification from Brewarrina that their match wasn’t going to go ahead while the Cobar Roosterettes were only notified on Saturday morning of their forfeit from the Newtown ladies League Tag team.
The First Grade game was then moved up the program with an early kick off at 1pm.
The Newtown First Grade team had arrived short on numbers and, with only 12 players, they struggled all game to contain a keen Roosters outfit.
To compensate, the first half was reduced to 25 minutes from the scheduled 35 minutes.
Cobar had a strong lead of 28-0 at half time thanks to first half tries from Tom McBride (2), Ben Simon, Mat Shepherd, David Watson and Shane Suridge.
Four more unanswered tries early in the second half from Tim Hillam, Sam Baker, Brandon Jones and Chris Deighton blew Cobar’s lead out to 50-0. The game was called early by a gentleman’s agreement (less than 15 minutes into the second half) as the Newtown team had had enough.
Cobar coach Ben Trudgett said it was very difficult to take much from the game as they didn’t have to do a lot of defence and most times when they had the ball in attack, they scored.
“When we did defend we held them quite well and our emphasis was on our ruck defence which we executed well as Newtown didn’t threaten our line all game,” Trudgett said.
Best on ground for Cobar were Hillam, Shepherd and McBride. The game’s best and fairest points went to McBride (three points), Simon (two points) and Newtown’s halfback, Eddie Pitt, picked up one point.
All three Cobar teams enjoy a bye this weekend and will be taking part in a tennis day on Saturday afternoon in support of Lisa Travis and Beau Webster’s fundraising efforts for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
The following weekend the club’s First Grade and League Tag players will travel to Walgett to face the Walgett Dragons.
Coach Trudgett welcomed the two week break for his First Grade team.
He said the break would give a few players who are carrying “niggly” injuries some time to recover.
