The Cootamundra Bulldogs and Gundagai Tigers took battle in a scrappy affair on a lovely Sunday afternoon in Gundagai today.
The Bulldogs drew first blood with former Raiders Development Centre, Sam Gash crashing over, just after the 10-minute mark. The Cootamundra-bred star nailed his conversion and had the Bulldogs holding a surprising 6-0 lead.
Not more than five minutes after Gash’s try, Gundagai five-eighth Will Herring continued his excellent start to the season. Benji Marshall-like footwork saw the star half grab the hosts’ first four-pointer of the evening. However, he was unable to convert his try, and Cootamundra still held a slight 6-4 lead.
Gundagai would strike for their second soon after, through speedster Toby Dasey, who’s been electric for the first-grade Tigers since his return from his brief spell in Junee earlier in the year.
This time Herring made no mistake with the conversion and the Tigers were in control with a 10-6 lead.
Another dagger to the Bulldogs’ hopes was laid by winger Meli Drau who crossed over just before the intermission, the blow was lessened by Herring’s missed conversion leaving the Tigers with a 14-6 lead heading into the second half.
Just three minutes into the second half it was Tigers captain and super experienced half, Derek Hay who wouldn’t let the game go by without him having his impact. A brilliant piece of individual football from the halfback propelled the Tigers to a 22-6 lead over their Cootamundra rivals.
A late try for Bulldogs fullback Ollie Hall displayed a vigour of never say die, and the Bulldogs, who fought valiantly until the end in a 22-12 loss against a Tigers side used to winning premierships since 2015 onwards, showed grit.
Tigers coach Aaron Gorrell wants more from his side in the future week.
“We weren’t at our best but we did enough to win, we will need to do better in the future but it was good to get the two points,” Gorrell said.
“Penalties and errors were our undoing for a bit, honestly the crowd were even a bit bewildered by a few of the calls, I guess I need to do a bit more studying on the rules.
“When we played the footy we wanted to we were excellent, but we lowered our standards at times, if we do that in the future we won’t win.
“No one’s going to be walking away from the game thinking it was a good game to watch, very sloppy for the most part, credit to them they made it a difficult game for us.
“We took the game for granted and were lucky to escape with the win.
“We need to worry about our backyard, make sure we do what we need to do to get the two points next week against Brothers.
“Our 6 and 7 are playing really well, if we play well off the back of them we will go a long way.
“It’s a strong comp, we can’t take anyone as an easy game if we’re not at our best we will drop points like we almost did today.”
From a Bulldogs point of view, coach David Buttriss who was ill the entire week saw a lot of positives.
“We did a lot of things right, I thought there were long periods of the game where we were the better team and just couldn’t put the points on the board. We were great that opening 10-12 minutes and then just fell away a bit,”
“I was impressed with our forward pack again this week, they were massive last week but playing a team like Gundy is an even bigger task for them. They kept us in it for a long way, I couldn’t be happier with them.
“It felt like at the start of the game we weren’t getting many calls going our way then towards the end it was almost like they were doing a bit of equalising.
“If we could limit silly errors in our game we’d be a lot better chance of turning these close losses into wins.
“We’ve got South City this week who are in a similar boat to us, no doubt in my mind that if we play as we did this week we will be in it for a long way.”
No one expected Junee to down last year’s premiers in Young on Saturday and no one really thought Coota would get as close as they did to the soldiers at ANZAC Park, but they did.
With Coota on the improve and Junee set to welcome back Ben Shea and Chase Bernard, expect some tantalising score lines and outcomes to come in the middle of the Group 9 season.
More to come
Tully Potts, SWST Group Sports Editor
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