Debutante Dredin Sorensen with coach Damian Willis
The Junee Diesels have left their faithful in pure ecstasy after a dramatic late try by star hooker Quaider Kea, left the reigning premiers speechless, as the Diesels recaptured a lead that was in their possession for much of the game in the dying embers of the fire fight, to secure the 30-28 win over their counterparts.
The Diesels flew out of the traps with flying Fijian and crowd favourite Ratu Saurara opening proceedings after a lovely bit of Diesels football. Cooper Wright added the extras and the Diesels had an early advantage inside 10 minutes.
This shocked the Pickers in to action, with stalwart Matt Murray coming to the fore. It didn’t take the Young side long to respond with five-eighth Murray, slicing his way through, close to the Diesels’ goal line. Tom Demieo; who kept his role at hooker this week, pushing the returning Jesse Corcoran to lock, converted the extras and the scores were level.
The Diesels had a roaring crowd behind them at Laurie Daley Oval, and they conjured two tries in quick succession through winger Fiti Taalol and big back rower Jack Schubert. Wright nailed one of two of the conversions and the Diesels found themselves with an unlikely 16-6 lead.
The good times kept rolling for the Diesels with the ever talented Saurara doubling his tally soon after. This was preceded by a Wright penalty goal and with the centre converting the Fijian’s try, the Diesels led 24-6.
Jese Wainibuli found himself in the sin bin at the 38th minute mark and this setback allowed the Cherrypickers some hope.
The Pickers, as always, were never down and out, and off the back of some silly errors from the home side, clawed their way back, through tries from Matt Noakes, Aborosio Navori (2) and fullback Issac Matalavea-Booth.
With the addition of a penalty goal Young added another 2 points and had seemingly completed the comeback breaking Junee hearts with a 28-24 scoreline.
Late on in the game when all hope seemed lost, Quaider Kea, who has been a swiss army knife of sorts for the Diesels this season, filling in along the backline, crashed over the line, withdrawing nothing but jubilation from the home crowd. Wright calm as ever nailed the conversion and the Diesels successfully toppled the reigning Group 9 Premiers 30-28.
Coach Damian Willis was on cloud 9 with the result.
“We trained really well and prepared equally as good so I was quietly confident we’d give a great showing of ourselves. We had strengthened the team leading up to the game with Dredin Sorensen playing his first game fresh off the boat from France, he was huge for us,” Willis said.
“It’s hard to pick standouts from a win as good as that, the first half I would’ve given them all 10s, then in the second half we had a bit of brain fog in moments which against a team like Young you can’t afford to do. Luckily we got away with it.
“Tommy Carroll was brilliant, Jayden Hoeta through the middle was humongous, Young have one of the best forward packs in the comp and if Jayden didn’t have as good of a game as he did there’s no doubt in my mind we would’ve pulled up short today.
“It shows how far the Club have come, guys like Jese and Ratu as well as others were here when Junee couldn’t field a first grade team, never complained, played for the reserve grade and now got to be a part of a win against one of the best teams in the comp.
“The second half they dominated us honestly, it was only the final seven or eight minutes where we started to click again and have a bit of ball in their red zone. We were stringing some nice bits of play together and finally the breakthrough came from Quaider with about a minute left.
“Players like him (Quaider) and Fole (Daniel Foley) are so important to us, the ability to play in multiple positions and do a great job at them is invaluable. When Fole went back to fullback while Jese was in the bin I thought he did an excellent job leading us on the field.
“We’re not going to get too far ahead of ourselves, we know there’s plenty to improve on, as I’ve said the second half was a pretty ordinary and that’s an area we’re definitely going to improve on, for now though we will enjoy the win and hopefully take a huge amount of confidence from it.
“We’re pretty destitute at hooker at the moment with both our first grade and reserve grade hookers out through work and injury respectively at the moment, so to be able to bring in Sorensen who’s a quality lock and move Quaider to hooker and have the team play as well as they did is a credit to every bloke who was out on that field today.”
Damian is a well documented legend of Junee footy and country football as a whole, unfortunately a recent health scare saw his retirement from the game he loves. Still the always positive coach loves his job of coaching.
“Given my recent health scares a close game like that was the last thing I needed, I was pacing up and down trying to keep the old heart regulated but it was definitely stressful. Thank God we came away with the two points,” Damian joked.
Young Cherrypickers President Andrew Smith was disappointed with the result.
“Similar story to the game vs Gundagai. We stumbled out of the blocks and were our own
worst enemy in the first half. We tried hard in the second half but if you start that slow vs
any team it’s going to be hard to win,” Smith said.
“We’ve come out of the game with some pretty big injuries too, Jack Hogan went down with what looks to be a pretty bad injury, Jesse Corcoran who was only just back this week had a pretty bad cork and Tommy Demeio was complaining of an injury too but certainly the most concerning is Jack.
“We’ve got Temora next week who would be the last team you’d want to play with our
current injury situation, our depth isn’t as strong as it was this time last year but that’s the
cons of bush footy, you can’t keep everyone. Temora are going through a pretty bad injury
run themselves at the moment so we will see what we can do.”
The Diesels will celebrate their win in as fine a style as they got it tonight, before turning their heads to next weeks game against the Albury Thunder in Albury.
Tully Potts, SWST Group Sports Editor
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