Junee Diesels have come out of the gate swinging on Saturday, beating last year’s premiers, Gundagai Tigers 18 – 14, at Anzac Park. The First Grade side entered the tigers’ den and came out victorious after a very close nail-biter.
Try scorers for first grade were: Jakeem Morgan, Thomas Carroll and Daniel Foley, Stuart Dunbar converted 3.
David Holt said it was a fantastic result for the start of the season, but it’s only the start of the race, and now the hard part is keeping it consistent.
“We got the win over Gundagai, which is a big achievement. To be that competitive against last year’s premiers was good. It was good that we got the victory. It’s a very good start to the season, that’s for sure,” he said.
“We have had good preparation. We have been training since January, so we are coming into it with a couple of quality trial matches.
“That is what you attribute it to is our preparation and being able to sort out those little problems before we go into the season. The boys themselves, they toughed it out. We’ve lost a couple of key players earlier on in the game. The blokes that were left out on the field, they dug deep and got the job done.
“Reserve grade had a tough game. They had their opportunities in the second half to score a couple of tries. Unfortunately, they just couldn’t quite get across the line. That was also a tough game; it was a low-scoring game, and both teams were giving it everything. It is hard to take when you lose by a point, but that’s the way football goes, sometimes.
“Our Under-18s are a bit of a ragtag side. A fair few of the players are new and haven’t played for a couple of years, but they’ve got good numbers, and I’m pretty sure that they’ll have a pretty good season in front of them.
“On the weekend, they were good in the first half. It just fell away a little bit in the second half, which is unfortunate, but that’s a bit of experience.
“The league tag girls, they had a great start to the season. It was a fairly sound win over Gundagai, and being a very young team, like there are a lot of young players in that Junee side, they’ll improve. But they had a very good win for sure.
“Unfortunately, the ladies tackle missed out on a game this week and on the 2nd of May as well because both Gundagai and Coota haven’t fielded a team in the women’s tackle.
“Our next match is against Coota on 2nd May at home.
“We will see what happens at training this week and how everyone fared after the weekend, and start getting ready for the next one.”
Reserve score: 12 – 11
League tag score: 38 – 10
Under 18’s score: 38 – 8
– Jack Murray
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