Well done Waverley, an emphatic win today and a deserved unbeaten premiership. I think the order this year was exactly right - Waverley, Knox, Trinity, Barker, Cranbrook, Aloysius (although a few people up near Hornsby may think otherwise).
Waverley's muscle in the forwards made all the difference today. They were 30% bigger than their opponents, and we all know what a good big player does to a good small player. If Trinity had 10% of the possession I'd be surprised. Waverley might have won by more had they let the backs do their thing instead of cluttering up the back line with props, because the finishing in the backs was clinical and they had plenty of speed. I thought Waverley's best were the 8, 15 and the wingers - though the tight five as a whole set things up well by monopolising the ball, and the 9 (although he was given an armchair ride by his forwards) has a very nice pass that gets the ball wide, quickly.
For Trinity the best was 15 Mitchell, whose defence was tremendous and who ran well when given the rare chance. 8 Niulala was good, while 9 Hatton-Ward worked hard but had almost no ball to do anything with.
Tried to find you WLF, but no luck! Spent much of my afternoon next to a Waverley supporter who doesn't know that under current CAS rules a scrum can't "push em back over the dead ball line!!!"
Well Snort, not sure if the predicted order was actually even close. The comp was supposed to be between Knox and Barker, but as I mentioned at the beginning of the CAS comp, this Waves age group had never lost a CAS throughout the years, they had suffered in the trials with many injuries and so it looked like they weren't going to be competitive this year. What actually happened was that the 7-8 missing players returned a few games before the CAS comp started, got cohesion going, and just managed to beat a very good Cranbrook side at QP.
Then from game 1 they just built and found their true ability, got better game after game.
As you saw today, when facing a Trinity side that had tremendous crowd support and were on a roll, the Waves kept rolling, and after the first 20 minutes, the Waves tended to dominant.
A big strong pack, and a very fluid and quick backline became evident in the 2nd half, as per other games.
Trinity definitely had a crack, dropped a ball with the line wide open in the 1st half, the no.8 was terrific, as was the fullback for Trinity.
I did think the Waves 9 outplayed the Trinity 9, but as you aptly pointed out, that was behind a dominant Waves pack.
I recon Trinity will, and should, celebrate this year, could be even better next year.
The school support and singing was excellent, but need some Elvis tunes in the mix.
Sorry I missed you, I was hoping you would say let's meet somewhere, and I kept checking my phone, never mind. I was there at about 10.30am!
P.S. No beard, probably not an extra 60 kilos, remember I was a glory boy back, but also FU.... tough
Hopefully next year my friend at DV!
