The Cobar Roosters Club had plenty to crow about on Saturday afternoon after a mammoth win in First Grade and another victory in the Ladies League Tag game.
It was almost a triple celebration for the Co-bar club who hosted three Baradine sides for Round 11 of the Christie & Hood Castlereagh competition at Tom Knight Memorial Oval, with the Roosters Under 18s playing a come-back thriller to narrowly be beaten 22-20 on the final buzzer.
While the Roosters First Graders were fa-voured to win their match, it was a ‘red letter day’ for the Roosterettes as the Cobar side has not previously beaten the Baradine girls in Cobar’s four seasons of playing in the Castle-reagh competition (apart from one game in the 2018 preseason knockout).
Roosterettes co-coach Jay Egan was thrilled with the team’s upset win over the second placed Baradine outfit on Saturday.
“It’s a real milestone for us to beat the benchmark side,” Egan said at the after game presentations.
He said it was great to see the Roosterettes successfully execute a number of attacking plays they had been working on at training which helped them to record their landmark win on Saturday.
“Moving forward this season, it’s very posi-tive for our girls,” Egan said.
Brianna Watson and Zoë Egan got the Roosterettes off to a flying start in Saturday’s win with a try from the get go.
Watson crossed for Cobar’s first points with-in the first minute of the match after Egan at-tacked the line and passed off to Watson who ran into a hole to score.
It wasn’t until midway through the half that Baradine was able to level the score.
They then took back the ascendancy six minutes out from half time with a second try and, their third right on the buzzer, gave them a comfortable 16-4 lead at the break.
At the re-start the Cobar girls once again got off to a great start and recovered the ball from a short kickoff.
The Roosterettes continued to attack and their excellent defence held the Baradine girls in their half for much of the remainder of the game and scoreless for the rest of the match.
Egan and Watson combined again for Co-bar’s next points with Egan this time finding the gap to score and Watson’s successful con-version closed the margin to 16-10.
Cobar was virtually gifted their next try when the Baradine girls were penalized for a forward pass after trying to quickly get the ball off their try line.
Brennah Aumua breezed through the stunned Baradine defenders to score and by midway through the second half, Cobar only trailled by two points, 16-14.
Five minutes later Aumua crossed again after she picked up a loose ball and ran 20 metres untouched to score and put Cobar in front 18-16.
Shortly after Watson broke away from halfway
and outsprinted the Baradine defenders to
score under the posts and the successful conversion
by Egan had Cobar ahead 24-16.
Just before fulltime Aumua looked like scoring
a third try after a near length of the field
run but was caught just before the try line by a
desperate Baradine defender and the final score
remained 24-16 in Cobar’s favour.
Aumua earned her side’s Best & Fairest
three points, Watson (2) and Egan shared one
point with Bianka Jacobson.
Watson and Aumua also shared in the referee’s
B&F points and Egan was named the
Roosterettes’ Players Player.
Other standouts in Saturday’s game included
Jezebel Hitchins who was solid in defence and
Kayla Hasson who had a number of great runs
in attack.
