Rugby Union Barraba plays Scone

Rugby Union News

Last week there was some news of the passing of an ex-Barraba Rams player by the name of Ryan Cross. Ryan travelled from Yetman, near the border, each week to play with the team. This was in the ‘60’s when Bill Bucknell and Graham Bowman were running around.

Saturday saw Scone playing Barraba/Gwydir a girls game started the day which was ably refereed by Connor Rogers. The visitors dominated the game, as the locals dropped a lot of the ball allowing Scone to swoop on it and make inroads into Barraba’s end and score the points.

The locals dominated the scrum and won several tight heads. The score at half time was 12-14 to Scone after tries to Kiah Newell and Amie Middlemiss and a conversion. In the second half Barraba were penalised numerous times for high tackles which allowed the visitors the opportunity to put further points on the board. There was some good defence at times, but not enough, they cannot run without legs!

Emma scored a good try to make Barraba 17, but Scone with 6 tries won comfortably 33-17. A good chase by Kiah Newell from behind was a standout near the end.

Players Player         Katie Sweeney

3. Nat Philpott
4. Emma McDouall
5. Amie Middlemiss

In the men’s game, Scone were first on the board after 5 minutes for a 5-0 lead. Then Sloan made a good run down the sideline to put

pressure on the visitors close to their line and, from a tap penalty, Will Robertson scored 5-5. After some good runs up the field a scrum near the line saw Barraba awarded a push-over try to half-back Spencer and a score of 10-5 to the home team. Scone came back hard and attacked the Barraba line for some time but strong defence held them out. Barraba found themselves 1 short when Rogers was sin-binned for 10 minutes and a half-time score of 10-5.

There did not seem to be any pressure at the back of the line-out to torment the 5/8^th when they won the ball which allowed their backs to get a roll on. Another problem was a front row playing as an outside centre instead of in among the forwards doing some of the hard work.

Preston scored 2 tries and Rogers converted one for a final score 27-12 to Barraba and with other results keeps the Club in the hunt for a top 4 position.

Players Player      W. Robinson and H. Preston

3. H. Preston
4. N. Sweeney
5. J. Sloan

Barraba/Gwydir travel to Quirindi this weekend and no juniors this Friday as they go to Tamworth. An ‘oldies game’ is being proposed for August 13^th when we play Pirates for a similar day to Ladies Day.