The Cobar Roosters well and truly beat the Narromine Jets 60-16 in their Christie & Hood Castlereagh First Grade match at Tom Knight Memorial Oval on Saturday.
It was a bit of a surprising result as the game had been touted as being a ‘match of the round’, with the third placed Jets expected to have been more of a challenge for the high flying Roosters.
For much of the first half, Saturday’s game was evenly matched with both sides sharing possession and strongly defending their try lines.
Pacey winger Ben Griffiths opened the scor-ing for the Roosters 10 minutes into the match with the first of his three tries for the game.
The Jets replied soon after when prop Luke Thompson muscled his way over to open Nar-romine’s account.
Cobar then took control after Ash Davies scored two runaway tries and Tim Hillam pushed over for another for the Roosters to go ahead, 20-4.
The Jets fought their way back into the match to narrow the margin to 20-10 just be-fore halftime but a late try by the Roosters through winger Jack Brown, extended Cobar’s lead to 26-10 at the break.
It wasn’t long after the re-start that Griffiths raced away for his second try to push the Roosters out to a 32-10 lead.
Cobar virtually handed the Jets their next try after the Roosters were penalized twice in quick succession for being offside.
The Jets’ subsequent converted try brought the margin back to 32-16.
It was however the last mistake the Roosters would make in the match as they went on to play the remainder of the game in a much more controlled manner.
They passed the ball around well and their patience prodding the line paid off when cap-tain/coach Loma Atuau forced his way over to add another try to his season’s tally.
Soon after Tom Plater saw his try scoring opportunity 10 metres out when he scooted over from a quick play of the ball to dive over and score under the posts.
Ted Smith’s determined run up field (dragging a number of defenders with him) helped to set up Cobar’s next try.
Smith was halted mere metres from the line by the Jets’ defenders however he managed to get the ball out the back which was passed on to Brown who dived over for his second try of the match.
Veteran Jimmy Neyland set up Cobar’s next try and his deft kick in play to the corner found Griffiths again on the burst and he raced over for his third try for the match.
With the clock ticking down, it looked like all of the Roosters were keen to get their names on the try scorers’ list before the final whistle with Jed Noonan going close and Na-than McAndrew was held up on the line.
Neyland however was happy to just keep setting up tries and his well-timed pass to Da-vies on the burst, resulted in Cobar’s final try, which was their 11th for the game.
Davies justly earned the Players’ Player award and Best & Fairest three points while B&F two points went to David Watson and Griffiths collected one point.
The Roosters will travel to Coonamble this Saturday to play the Bears in Round 9.
