Group Six dominated their annual representative match against Group Seven on Saturday afternoon at Community Oval, Moss Vale, reports MIKE SHEAN.
The home side ran out comprehensive winners 38-16 in the match, which was also a trial for the Greater Southern Stars team, which will compete in the CRL Country Championships later this month.
A solid crowd in attendance cheered when Moss Vale’s Jesse Dee opened the scoring after only a couple of minutes with a nice run through the Bulls defence.
But the Bulls responded with two tries during a 10 minute period.
Josh Toohey and winger Mitch Simington gave the visitors a 12-6 lead after 22 minutes.
If there were any concerns in the Group 6 camp they were quickly dispelled when the locals responded with two quick tries of their own.
Camden’s Ben Weir and Narellan’s Drury Low crossed within four minutes of each other to return the lead toGrpup6.
With the score at 18-12 Kurt Field scored for the Bulls on the stroke of halftime.
The teams walked off for the break at 18-16 when the visitors failed to convert their last gasp try.
The quality of the football in the first 40 minutes was very good and would have been appreciated by the crowd in attendance.
Whatever home coach Russell Lewis said to his troops in the change rooms seemed to work, because they came out and blasted Group 7 away with another four tries in the second stanza.
Michael Lett opened the account after halftime, with a nice run from Weir setting up him up to score under the posts in front of the supporters who made the trip to the Southern Highlands.
Stuart Flanagan scored shortly after, with a typical dummy half scoot seeing the former NRL hooker bag a try of his own and extend the lead to 14 points.
Chris Browne, who was playing on the wing for the Group Six team, scored minutes later, after a well placed kick on the last tackle saw him cross the left corner, and give the locals an unassailable 34-16 lead, with over 20 minutes still to play.
Sione Kaivelata scored what was the final try of the afternoon, after another nice movement down the home side’s left hand side, which seemed to be a ploy from coach Lewis.
The final siren saw a 38-16 scoreline for the Group Six team.
Naturally coach Lewis was delighted with the performance from his team during their two game stint.
Lewis said after the game the players were easy to coach, and he “only had to steer them’’ in relation to plays, with many knowing each other well from previous campaigns.
Lewis said he expected several players from his side to be chosen for Greater Southern, and also praised last week’s Group 16 opposition, saying there should be players from that team chosen, despite the loss to Group 6.
Ray Cashmere, Bryce Gibbs, Flanagan and Andrew Diomei were all impressive in the victory over Group 7.
