Caption: Despite a two year absence from local football, John Quinn showed he still has what it takes and scored an impressive try in the Brahmans victory over West Belconnen last Saturday. Picture by Caron Elliott.
The South-West Brahmans gave their fans something to cheer about and a lot to look forward to when they took on the strong West Belconnen unit at McLean Oval last Saturday, and came away winners in both games. The high standard of play so early in the season must give both coaches a great deal of satisfaction.
In front of a crowd possibly as high as three hundred or more, the Brahmans, with Abbed Atallah leading the way, worried Belconnen from the start. Belconnen were never quite certain where the next attack would come from, with strong hit-ups from the forwards, with the likes of Josh Glover, Graham Morby and Shane Cross storming into the attack causing havoc in the Belconnen defence and allowing Atallah to place his kicks into the gaps, this let players like John Quinn, Andrew Jones and Craig Pollock to take advantage of the open spaces ahead of them and they did not hesitate to use it.
Quinn, in particular, making lots of metres with some strong, hard running was a constant worry to the Belconnen side and with Andrew Jones hanging around his centres like a thief in the night, it was never going to be long before the points started to flow. With Jones scoring in the first ten minutes of the game, it was to be the first of two for him.
Brahman’s coach Jason Pollard, with a very strong bench, took every opportunity to rotate his players giving them all a chance to impress. Corey Randell, the Under-18’s fullback, was given his chance in First Grade and once again proved that old football saying to be true, “If you’re good enough you’re old enough”. His cool headed display of taking the high ball was really worth watching.
The Brahmans’ straight line defence was extremely effective, making it very hard for the opposition to make a lot of metres in attack and with Brad Early and Abbed Atallah making probing runs from the set plays they always seemed to have Belconnen on the back foot. In the seventh minute of the second period, Atallah showed a lot of class with a little stab kick in behind the defence; he won the race to the bouncing ball, gathered cleanly and sprinted away 20 metres to score in the corner.
The game was played in three time periods and while the Brahmans controlled all three periods, the Belconnen side were never going to show the white flag and they came back strongly in the third section and were rewarded with a well-deserved try.
Full time scores were:
Under 18’s
South-West Brahmans 16 ~ West Belconnen 8
First grade
South-West Brahmans 28 ~ West Belconnen 6
Point scorers for Brahmans First Grade were, Andrew Jones and Adam Byrne both with two tries, Abbed Atallah and John Quinn one try and John also joined Corey Randall in the goal kicking points with one goal each.
This weekend, Sunday, April 13, First Grade will play Crookwell at Crookwell. The game starts at 2pm. The Under 18’s have the bye. The next home game will be at McLean Oval, Harden when the Brahmans will take on Goulburn with the first game commencing at 1pm. See you there!
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