Thoroughbreds Play for Will

By David Casson

The Inaugural Where There’s Will Round was held last weekend and what an outstanding success it was.

An anonymous donor provided jumpers for all First Grade teams and the Merriwa and Murrurundi Reserve Grade teams for teams to play in and then auction either after the games or in due course when it suits the Clubs.

The games at Scone were with Muswellbrook.

The Where There’s A Will foundation having special meaning to both Clubs with families within each Club having suffered there only tragic losses.

The ‘event’ was wonderfully supported by both Thoroughbred and Ram supporters with a big crowd gathering early in the day.

For Scone – it was not so successful on the field with only the ladies league tag running out winners 16:6 with Jacquie Simpson contributing all the points with three tries and two conversions.

The Scone Team have missed out on the semis, due to the team having to forfeit one match earlier in the season which resulted in a deduction of two competition points.

So while they have won more games than the fourth placed team, unfortunately they miss out.

The Club is very proud of the efforts of this very young team and look forward to next year.

The Under 18’s are in a four team competition so while they have not won a game this year (not for lack of effort), they will line up with the other three senior teams for this week’s minor semi finals.

The team suffered a heavy loss – 44-10 against the top of the table Muswellbrook, but will turn up ready to go and look to cause an upset next week.

The Reserve Grade let a healthy lead of 24:10 slip through their fingers, going down 24:28 in what was a disappointing effort leading into the semis. Plenty of work to do this week.

The First grade clash was highly anticipated with the winners to take out the Inaugural Where There’s A Will Tropy, donated by Will Carrigan’s Grandfather – Brian Adams.

The Thoroughbreds got off to a good start with a try to Sam Taylor after 5 minutes.

The conversion gave an early 6:0 lead, however the lead was short with Muswellbrook’s Dylan Thorne crossing near the posts for an early conversion to tie up the scores.

Daniel Ellis finished off some slick backline  movement to provide a the lead 10:6.

Mistakes and penalties seemed common for the Throughbreds and it was Bailey Taylor who crossed for the Rams again, also converting his try for a 16:6 half time lead.

The second half started poorly for the locals with Jacob Ellis crossing within minutes of the restart.

Kyle Wilcher gave the Scone supporters something to cheer about when he backed up and with great evasion skills crossed to narrow the gap to 12:20.

Scone managed to maintain some pressure and when Tim Watson crossed to narrow the gap to 18:20 an upset looked on the cards.

But the Rams capitalised on poor ball security for Daniel Ellis to cross for his second and then Lennie Craft showing some fine individual skills to stretch the lead to 32:18.

Captain Wes Suckley did finish of the scoring with a try with 4 minutes to go to provide the final score of 32:24.

The crowd on the day were able to honour two Scone old boys who played in the first Under 18 Premiership winning team from 1952.

Merton Lawrence and Ian Moore presented the jumpers to the Scone team and then tossed the coin for the start of the game.

Mick O’Brien of Equilaw and Jason Brooks of Ausure had a goal kicking competition which resulted in a magnificent donation of $20,000 to the Foundation.

At the Scone Sporties, the 17 Scone First Grade jumpers were auctioned and the outstanding support of the community saw over $50,00 raised.

This amount was highlighted by Todd Greenberg purchasing the #14 jumper for $13,500 and then donating the jumper to the Carrigan’s – stating that while the jumper could hold pride of place in the NRL museum, it deserved to be kept locally.

The support of the Group 21 Club and members has been testament to the efforts of the Where There’s A Will foundation.

Local Thoroughbred Old Boy, Mick Reynolds did an outstanding job of organising and coordinating the weekend and the lead up to it.