Crookwell’s Memorial Oval was the venue for Binalong’s round 3 clashes in the George Tooke Shield when they met the Crookwell Green Devils on Sunday.
Without a win in 2014 and a differential of minus 42, Binalong could have expected an easy day. But this wasn’t to be, the Devils putting up some surprising resistance. Consecutive penalties against the Premiers gave Crookwell some good field position from the opening and they held onto it.
Raid after raid was inflicted on Binalong’s goal line. The defence held after a couple of close shaves. Crookwell held the lion’s share of possession, but when the Brahmans finally got some ball it paid dividends. The sheer speed and brilliance of halfback Matt Cook split the defence and he was in for the opening points. Dave Brown missed his first conversion to give the visitors a 4-0 lead.
Crookwell tried to strike back immediately and put more pressure on Binalong’s defence. This held up, but the visitors were clearly up against a much stronger opposition than expected.
About half way through the opening stanza, Daniel Poidevin broke through for a Binalong try and Dave Brown obliged with the boot. With the score at 10-0, the Brahmans were within 8 minutes of half time and still appeared unable to take control of the game. Their completion rate was very good indeed, but they just could not get the penetration to improve the score line. Penalties were also heavily against them as well.
Then at about 6 minutes before the break, without warning and like some huge machine, the Premiers ground into action. The defenders now had their work cut out. With the regular hooker still out with a hand injury, Chris Rawlinson again played dummy-half and Matty Lawrence was at 5/8. The position appears to have been made for Matt as he streaked through the defence to score. Dave Brown brought up the half time score line of 16-0.
As Guy Sherrett is out with a hamstring problem, regular back rower Shaun Davis put on the number three jersey. Like Matt Lawrence, the change of position for Shaun seems made for him because he went on to score three tries in a very dominant second half performance by Binalong.
The team only had 17 players for the Crookwell game; an achilles injury to full back Andrew Swaffield could see him out for nine weeks. So Craig Irwin now fills the position and made good metres during the game.
It was hard to pick out anyone special as the Brahmans were excellent right across the park. Tony Worthy, Adam and Alex Waters hit the ball up strongly as did the evergreen James Blair and Ben Spencer.
To finish the game, Adam Waters grabbed a brilliant front rower’s try and Rawlo finished an excellent display of ball movement to get a try of his own. Scott Naughton who was inspirational all day.
As the full time siren drew closer and following Shaun Davis’ final try, Daniel Poidevin was invited to demonstrate his new method of kicking goals. As an ex-AFL player this was bound to be interesting and it was just that. The ball is placed on the tee so as to completely miss the posts. It is kicked in the same fashion but strangely appears to hit something in mid-flight, then jags suddenly to the left, hits the far goal post just above the cross bar and canons through for 2 points. A shot Horace Lindrum would have been proud of.
Binalong 44, tries: S.Davis (3), D.Poidevin, M.Cooke, M.Lawrence, Adam Waters, C.Rawlinson. Goals: D.Brown (5) D.Poidevin (1) def Crookwell 4. Crookwell do not have a touch football side so The Jersey Girls earned the 2 points and the week off to ready themselves for their 1:30pm clash with Harden at the Re-union game next Saturday at Binalong.
Although Binalong has no junior teams in its own right, it does have junior players competing in outside clubs. Congratulations to local junior Jake Arabin who has been selected to play for Southern NSW Schoolboys team at Toronto on May 25. Jake also played in the Riverina Schoolboys team who were victorious in their knock-out match to make the State matches.
Bos indicus.
