We started the year off looking green with only 7 players returning from J7 Black, the other 7 players were either new to our team or completely new to the oval ball game. ‘Interesting’ is a good word to describe the first training with an enthusiastic bunch of mixed personalities and abilities.

Our goal was to get them to tackle. Some took to it naturally like Luca ‘the Bull’ Henderson, but by the end of the fourth week, most were making a valiant effort with Luc S, peaking in the last few games.

They soon became a tight knitted team thanks to great parent commitment to the social side of team bonding. Then Paddy attended the Leslie coaching course and we were all in for a wakeup call. Down and Ups become a well-known term as well as going to the ground and driving over. Then their games started to look like impressive rugby matches. Luke J and Quinn leading the turnovers for the season. Josh ‘Wheels’ O’Sullivan our top try scorer with Carlos ‘hat trick’ Jenkins and Noah M also frequent try-scorers.

Some of our originally quieter players started to shine with Noah T excelling in the tight play, Morgan the ‘hot stepper’ and William having some great sideline runs and Nathan enjoying the physical encounters. With Paddy off the field, leadership skills developed quickly, taking on the captain role inspired Jasper in later games and luckily we had Oli the hooker to control line outs. Not only the skills were impressive, the sportsmanship was amazing with Finn regularly offering to play for opposing teams. We are very proud of the skills our team have learnt this season and how much their game has transformed from rippa. Looking forward to 2016!