The Brahman’s stay at the top of the competition table has been put on hold for a while after going down in a thriller to West Belconnen Warriors at Binalong last Saturday by 24 points to 20. These two evenly matched sides entertained the large crowd with a great display of rugby league. West Belconnen made the best of the start with a good set of six in the opening minutes which left them in a good position to attack either side of the field. They moved the ball to the left hand side of the paddock with a clever run from the five-eighth, that was supported by the full back, this resulted in them scoring wide out in the sixth minute.
West Belconnen attacked again from the kick off and again had the Brahmans defence under pressure as they probed both sides of the field and scored again in the tenth minute. After failing to convert the try they led the Brahmans 8-nil.
From the restart the Brahmans started to get the measure of West Belconnen and came storming back into the game and had the visitors defence at sixes and sevens as they mounted raid after raid on Belconnen’s line. The Brahman’s forwards created havoc, Joe Dyball punched a hole in their defensive line, and scored midway between the posts and the corner and the Brahmans were back in the game trailing 4 points to 8.
The Brahmans continued to hammer the warriors for the rest of the first half with both the backs and the forwards putting themselves on the line for each other while being urged on by the home crowd. Brad Earley took the ball wide to the right hand side, found John Quinn in support and the big centre went on a strong run and linked up with Nathan Muscat who finished off the move by scoring a neat try. Following a successful conversion by Abed Atallah the Brahmans hit the front 10 points to 8.
With ten to go Jason Pollard put in a great twenty-forty kick that put Belconnen back on their own line and off the back of the scrum Earley got Benny James away and the Brahmans were in again. Abed Atallah converted and they led 16 points to 8.
In the remaining minutes of the half the crowd got a taste of what was to come in the second half when Joel Blundell
fielded a chip kick and set off on one of his determined runs only to have the referee call a strip. He followed this up a few minutes later when Atallah broke away, put in a little kick and won the race to the ball; soccered the ball away to his supports only to have them ruled offside. The Brahmans went to the break leading 10 points to 8.
Both sides put plenty of energy into the opening
minutes of the second half with Belconnen giving as good as it got. With play to-ing and fro-ing up and down the field and with some great tackling from both sides it was to be West Belconnen who would score first in the half when they picked up a chip kick and found a gap in the Brahmans defence. The Warriors raced in to score and after the conversion the score was 16 points to 14.
The Brahmans hit straight back and after some good cross field play they got Adam Byrne away and he capped another good game with a try and the Brahmans led 20 points to 14.
With the referees decisions getting harder and harder to work out, he came up with a screamer...at least he had the crowd screaming... when, from the kick off following the try and with Mitchell Grange’s foot clearly in touch and just about standing on the touch judges foot, he took the ball which was then clearly out... and instead of giving a penalty on the half way line, the ref (who has his own secret copy of the rules), awarded a scrum and the feed to Belconnen! This turned the game on its head, but this bloke was not finished with us yet! Following a couple of cross field runs, the Warriors scored in the corner after having knocked the ball on in the process....but that didn’t worry this ref and with the scores locked up at 20 points a piece, he thought he would give the crowd a grandstand finish and so he came up with another gem right on full-time. With Belconnen in attack he thought it would be nice to have a result, but with the Brahmans not in the mood to help him out, he got around that little problem by ruling a two-metre forward pass as okay... end result West Belconnen Warriors 24 Points, South-West Brahmans 20.
This week the Brahmans are at home again at McLean Oval, Harden against the Gordon Highlanders, a side from north Goulburn. Games commence at 1pm with the Under18’s and the main game kicks off at 2.30pm.
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