Country v B&I Lions

[No4918]

If they can let in less than the Force i think there will be plenty of happy country players tonight.

 

[Bairdy]

Lions put 64 - 0 on the Combined Country. Fair to say they dropped off at half time, where there were spells the Country held on in defence and at setpiece.

Country gave it a crack at least

 

[Wheatman]

Well done the Cameron Blades Invitational XV. Well played and the forwards stood up. Lions backs were way too good. Thought the defence of the rolling maul, and in tight was great. Unfortunately you could see they hadn't trained or played together and there was very little to show when they had the pill. An awesome memory for those involved.

Any idea who won earlier? I heard the Heelers by a point but not sure.

 

[Bruce Ross]

I thought it was a gutsy and proud performance by the bush boys given their level of experience. One of the sad things about modern rugby is that when players finish their professional careers they retire, which means there are no old hands around who can guide the kids through fixtures like this. We need to encourage players to continue on for a few seasons, putting something back into the code and experiencing again the enjoyment and camaraderie they had when they first started to play.
.

 

[TSR]

Any idea who won earlier? I heard the Heelers by a point but not sure.

Apparently Qld country won 21-20.

 

[hawktrain]

Qld Country did win 21-20 in what was a 70 minute game for some reason. Only saw the second half, was pretty scrappy and fairly even.

 

[ACT Crusader]

I didn't see the end of the game, but was there any jersey swapping?

 

[flat_eric]

How great was that jersey. Just unfortunate it will most likely never see the light of day again. Such a shame the Rebels couldn't come up with something as striking when they entered the competition, instead the competition got yet another mostly-blue generic kit.

 

[Athilnaur]

I usually struggle to observe the scrum dark arts at work but I couldn't help noticing the CC tighthead, Metcher, seemed to be giving Corbisiero a lot of problems. Didn't always result in a win but I didn't see him buckle once. Looked like he pasted Corbisiero to me. Very impressed with his core strength, those legs look pretty powerful too.

 

[lincoln]

Doesn't seem to have been mentioned but the falcon in the 13th minute from the conversion attempt from wide that rebounded back off the upright and knocked the guy picking the tee up in the head must be one of the best ever. Apologies for horribly long sentence.

 

[Morton]

Great effort by the country boys. Who never gave in. Saw some of the players leaving the ground with war wounds and hanging on tightly to full lions kits. Not a doubt in my mind that they gave it everything that had.

 

[AngrySeahorse]

My thoughts (I have quite a few). I'm pretty pleased with the effort of the CC side. The crowd was quite decent for a game where people knew prior that this was going to be a very one sided contest.

I watched the pre-game matches. NSW Country came so close to stealing victory at the end against the QLD Heelers (very entertaining game). Hunter Sports girls 7's final against Merewether was quite good (nice to see some larger framed girls among them too). I did not get the end score as I was searching for my Ma at the time. I forget who the 2 schoolboys teams were but it was also a good game. I think I missed some other earlier games.

I was up in the nose bleeds of the stadium with Ma but ended up down on the grass alcohol hill "with the people" & had the joy of watching the game with my Rugby coach. I felt more comfy on the hill - just another sign reaffirming my bogan roots, sigh. Phil Waugh was at the game. Lions supporters were friendly & well behaved with only 2 people ejected.

The game itself. Tim Davidson, real capt's knock. I thought the set piece was actually pretty good, a few times on the 5m line I thought "here we go here comes a Lions rolling maul try" but to my surprise the CC team was very good at nullifying it. Lewie was good in defence. The CC back line did not have too many attacking opportunities but had good D considering the overlaps. It was the same thing that happened to the Force, CC needed more bodies to put down the Lions powerful runners & obviously that sucked in the defence & we were constantly outnumbered. CC went for touch rather than the 3's & I thought tried to play a game that would be good to watch despite the score. Not bad for a team with so little prep time (Kudos Cam Blades). Don't really need to analyse the Lions - we know what they're about.

Some people like to say that there is a ever widening gap between pro & amateur but I think it is good to point out that this gap is not infinite. A player can only get so fast or so strong. At some stage pro's will reach the max of what the human body can achieve (look at the 100m Olympic sprinters - it is said that they are getting close to going as fast as a human can possibly go). People also assume wrongly that while the pro's advance the amateurs remain stagnant - not so, lots of local old boys were telling me tonight that the club scene may be amateur but it is adopting more professional approaches when it comes to training & playing/tactics - more so than in their day. The passion & the old amateur mentality has not changed but they are looking to improve standards all the time. I'm not saying that in 10yrs time you'll see amateur teams coming close or even upsetting international ones like in the good ol days. However, I think it is realistic that overtime when the pro's have hit the peak the amateurs will close the gap & we'll start to see yet again those tighter contests.

Where I was sitting we were all in celebration mode because we gave CC a 70 point handicap so as far as we were concerned we won .

Georgina with this below too.

http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/u...untry-thrown-to-the-lions-20130611-2o2cb.html

 

[Hugh Jarse]

Doesn't seem to have been mentioned but the falcon in the 13th minute from the conversion attempt from wide that rebounded back off the upright and knocked the guy picking the tee up in the head must be one of the best ever. Apologies for horribly long sentence.

Didn't notice it at the time but the falcon was a doozy. Occurs at 13:08 game time.

The Tee boy was certainly wary about preventing a recurrence at later goal kicks.

At 70:40 there was a beauty of a falcon on Halfpenny. Seemed to knock him over.

 

[Shiggins]

Sounds like a very one-sided game.

(EDIT: Wording changed. Not appropriate)

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Phil Waugh was at the game. Lions supporters were friendly
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Is this juxtaposition Freudian?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Dan54]

No Shiggins, you couldn't be more wrong. It funny how enjoyable I find these types of games, we all knew CC had virtually no chance, but like historically with these games the CC boys threw everything they had at them. I would imagine they will all be very sore but very very content today.
Hats off to Steve Walsh for reffing game as he did, actually discouraging the Lions from trying to bury CC in scrums etc, and playing a bit shorter advantage to Lions a couple of times. Shit it reminded me so much of days when we used to have Lions etc doing 3 month tours in NZ playing a heap of little teams, and the Lions (and CC) players helping opposition up after a couple of hard tackles just makes me remember that the spirit of rugby is still alive in the professional age!!

 

[yourmatesam]

Kudos to the CC boys, they had a crack and did their best against a very solid Lions outfit. I thought it was a handy game, agree with the points about Steve Walsh - I thought I heard him actually ask the Lions scrum not to push too hard at one scrum! I wonder what his Referee Coach would have said about that one?

 

[Iluvmyfooty]

Lions 100+

Geez that was close

Was at the game and the country boys really stuck tot heir guns. A little awestruck in the first half but came out and competed very well against the Lions in the second. I wish that more tours like the Lions one took place (month long tour with plenty of mid-week games) and that this type of fixture, held in a country location (Townsville or Newcastle again), would be regular tour fixtures

 

[Brumby Runner]

I will say that the 'country' team never stopped trying, and some even put in some pretty good efforts, esp front row, locks and winger (Gibbons?). But all in all, a waste of time imo. It serves no purpose that I can see for the Wallabies and allows the Lions to test and refine their set piece moves. By and large, the country players were not up to international or even national standard and I think it is demeaning to the opposition.

 

[fatprop]

I thought Snowden was pretty good at 9, he showed all the stuff he was doing at Eastwood last season, hopefully he gets more game time next season with the Force