Harden Red Devils players Ben Lenehan and Shahid Khalfan flew to Adelaide last Wednesday, to take part in the National Rugby Championship  for the NSW Country Cockatoos.  The Championship marked six weeks since Ben and Said had played in the Grand Final against Coota, although other players in the squad had played as recently as a week or two weeks ago.

The first match saw New South Wales Country take on South Australia under 23s with both Ben and Shahid starting for the Cockatoos. NSW played very well an ran out winners 99 to 7, with Ben picking up a hat-trick of tries and also the kicking duties in the second half, where he scored six from seven conversions.

   On Friday the Cockatoos came up against Queensland Country in the annual grudge match with the Cockatoos able to hold off the QLD side 13 to 12 in a tough encounter, known as the ‘battle of the border’ The win now allows it allows NSW bragging rights for the next 12 months.

    Ben came off the bench and Shahid started at Half-back before Shahid injured his ankle. Ben said, “We would have been gutted to lose, we had a lot of opportunities and should’ve won comfortably.”

On Friday night the players enjoyed a tournament style dinner which saw all of the teams meet at the Oval and mingle with each other. Saturday saw the Cockatoos enjoy a rest day where they played par-3 golf and watched the AFL Grand Final.

   Sunday saw the Cockatoos take on Perth Gold, who had performed strongly during the competition. Ben played outside Centre Centre against Perth whilst Shahid did not play partly due to his ankle and the rotation of the 3 Half-backs. Out of the 3 matches Shahid started in 2 of them.

Ben said, “We went down 15 to 5 in that match, it was very similar to the Queensland match with very windy conditions, we didn’t quite click well enough. A couple of times our kicks ran dead due to the windy conditions, but it wasn’t why we lost.”

   The Cockatoos had an internal dinner on Sunday night where a number of awards were given out. An inaugural award which embraces the spirit of rugby both on and off the field was awarded to Shahid. Ben said, “It was pretty nice for him to win it.”

   Both Ben and Shahid had a really good time. Ben said, “We were both new to the scene, we weren’t quite sure what to expect, it was a really good culture and a really good vibe around camp and a good experience. We were both very happy that we got the chance to go and do it, particularly me, I only got called up with two weeks to go. Experiences like this don’t always come around, hopefully Shahid will have another run around next year.”

    In other rugby news, the AGM for the Harden Red Devils will be held on Thursday, October 3 at 6:30pm at the Lighthorse Hotel in Murrumburrah.