A cold and very dew soaked oval confronted the boys at the start of the day. We played Tomaree High School in our first game. The conditions meant the boys focused more on ball handling, rather than attacking touch. Josh Brown and Luke Shereb used their speed and guile to break down the Tomaree defence and score some slick tries. We eventually won 4-1.

A second-round bye, allowed the grounds to finally dry-up and allowed the boys to play some football. Our games were now lined-up with a game on, game off situation. We comfortably beat Taree High School 7-1, Hunter River High School 8-1 and St Bede’s Catholic College Chisholm 6-1. The results saw us come out top of our pool and progress to the knockout rounds.

In our quarter-final we came up against a quality St Pius X High School, Adamstown team. They started quickly and scored in the opening set. We found our rhythm soon after and raced to a 4-1 lead. However, they just would not go away and levelled the game in the final minute. Josh Brown stepped up again (as he had all day) and controlled our restart set, working up field. With time counting down, he created space for the match winner.

A late change to the draw saw us now play the highly fancied Hunter Sports High in the semi-final. Hunter got out to a fast start and scored two quick tries. The boys found some rhythm and the result was some great end-to-end play. We clawed one back and then fatigue (from us and the referees) saw a few contentious calls go against us. We were unable to recover, and Hunter ran out winners 5-1.

While disappointed, the boys did a great job given the number of games they played back-to-back in this gruelling format.

The team consisted of:

Josh Brown, Luke Shereb, Caleb Petersen, Kyan Werner, Kobi Flanders, Zach Herring, Fletcher Sommerville, Archie Carpenter, Sam Logan, Donovan Wright, Cooper Jones and Kevin Matthews.