Graham Guthrie – Life Member, Jason Ferrario – Emcee and Noel Foley. Credit Liz Cowled.
“People are talking up how good it was. Everywhere I go, people are going out of their way to tell me how good it was.”
This was the answer given by Diesels President David Holt when asked about the weekend and the Centenary Dinner by the Independent.
It was a great weekend of festivities with Junee gaining the upper hand against old foes Young.
“It was a good show. Actually, the whole day. We started off with the Junee junior rugby league playing Young as well. So right across the park from under 6s right through to the 1st grade against Young,” said David.
“The results on the board against Young, the seniors won four of the five games.
“League Tag won, the Under 18s went down and then the girls tackle reserve grade and first grade all won a game. We had a top day and going into the night was excellent.
“Jason Ferrario was the MC for the night, and he got us through it which was great.
“At one stage we had Brett Kenny, Loz (Laurie Daley) and Brian Gray.”
Brian Gray, David said, was the Captain Coach in 1986, and took the team to a premiership win before going on to “bigger and better things”.
“Brian Gray was the captain coach back in 86 when they won the last premiership and Brian went on to bigger and better things. He was involved with the recruitment development in the Roosters for roughly 30 years.
“Those three characters were up on stage for about two hours sharing a yarn,” said David.
“Then we had the auction, that was the next big item, [before] the cutting of the cake and singing of the Diesels song and that sort of thing and a jersey auction. We had two sets of jumpers, one for the women’s rugby league and one for the First graders.
“They were special jumpers and have glory written down the sides of them and a great heap of names, [such as] life members, the committee, any general members that wanted to go on there… they chipped in 10 bucks each and got their name on there, coaches etc. It has got a heap of names supplemented into the material on the front.
“The Jersey auction was very successful as well. They went for a good price.
“The only thing I missed there was on Friday evening, we had the 40-year reunion of the 86 comp that we won 18s, reserve grade and 1st grade in 1986.”
In the U16s team himself that year, David said there were a few of his old teammates there in attendance on the Friday night.
“You could not move in the main bar of the Red Cow Hotel. It was a good night, just a catchup, reminisce sort of thing prior to the main event,” he said.
“Brett Kenny told stories from the Parramatta era in the 80s, not so much State of Origin, but, his Australian days in the Australian side, and of course, him and Loz bouncing off each other in different eras, and then Brian Gray would chime in every now and then and he was good too.”
“For the actual centenary dinner we ended up with close to 240 [people]. We had to turn people away. We were supposed to stop at 200, but we squeezed a few more in.
“A few people have said it was funny, but it was sentimental at the time. It wasn’t sentimental as in over the top. It was funny with good humour with a bit of sentiment in it.”
When it comes to footy, David said, “Chase and Damian, they’ve got those blokes focussed on each game.”
“That is going to be the big bit. We have got ourselves in a situation where we need to win every game, it’s like we are playing semifinals now, like build up each week and then boom crash down, got to build up again in a week’s time. It’s going to be fairly intense for Damian and Chase to keep that momentum going.
“We will play this weekend against Southcity here at home on Sunday and then we’ve got the bye for the Riverina Schoolboys Football Carnival, a little bit of a reprieve and then we have got to be ready to take on Albury.”
With Albury “rolling Gundagai on Sunday”, David says he was slightly concerned as last he had checked, Gundagai were the side to beat.
“Young didn’t play bad on the weekend. They were solid. I thought Gundagai were a better side than what Young are when we played them,” he said.
“It is going to be an interesting season.”
Laurie Daley copped a large amount of criticism only to be vindicated in the QLD decider.
Having the voice of Rugby league and one of its legends in Laurie Daley come from Junee gives locals a lot to be proud of. David made it clear that Junee has the NSW State of Origin Coach’s back.
“Everyone’s got Laurie’s back. It wouldn’t matter if win, lose, or draw. He knows this is home. He loves coming home when he’s got the opportunity because he knows he can be himself without being harassed too much.
“The other night, he brought the Origin Shield.”
“When the opportunity arises, there’s a lot of people who got a photo with Laurie and the shield. When he was up on stage with the shield there was a big roar from the crowd.
“Loz pointed it out the other night – Junee has only ever won the 1st grade premiership twice in our 100 years. One was in 1964 and the coach was Don Furner and he went on to the Raiders, and an Australian coach.”
The South West Slopes Times covers an area approximately the size of Fiji in country NSW. We look after a population of more than 50,000 people with our staff servicing 7 major towns and dozens of villages with our story telling footprint.
We offer weekly print editions at $3 a copy and we also offer digital subscriptions across 3 months $30, 6 months $60 and 12 months $120.
We are one of the last truly local independent family run newspaper businesses in the state.
Contact us today to find out how we can promote your business or organisation across our huge network by emailing ads@thetimes.net.au or by calling 0413 763 216.
If you have a news tip, lead or scoop for us please make contact as we love celebrating our communities. You can contribute articles via our South West Slopes Times website.
