THE Under 18 Bidgee Bulls outclassed their Western rivals in Saturday’s Country Championships much to the delight of three local lads.
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Jesse Corcoran and Jacob Hardy, along with injured teammate Jake Walker, donned the Bidgee jersey on Saturday in front of a huge crowd at Scully Park, Tamworth.
While the Western Rams hadn't looked like being challenged on their way to the final, let alone beaten, they were thoroughly outclassed by the Bulls - who they'd trounced in Round 1 - ultimately losing out 44-10.
Cowra centre Jai Doolan opened the scoring for Western five minutes in, but when Young’s Hardy cancelled that out with his four-pointer in the 19th minute the floodgates - unexpectedly - opened for Bidgee.
Max Burey, Jesse Wighton and Solomona Faletagaloa-Mape all scored before half-time, with Liam Oakley's brace of conversions giving the Bulls a 20-4 lead.
Western and Cowra hooker Rick Nobes crossed and Bayden Searle converted just before the break to cut the deficit to 10, but it ended up being to no avail.
Bidgee ran in another five tries to Western's none in the second period through Wighton, Zac Saddler, Nick Hay, Cody Hodge and Young’s Corcoran, with Faletagaloa-Mape slotting two conversions to seal the 34-point drubbing.
Bidgee region manager, David Skinner praised the effort of Young’s players who no doubt contributed to the Bulls’ success.
“It’d be hard to fault anybody in the side, we went out with a good game plan and the boys stuck with it perfectly,” he said.
“Jesse was really prominent with a couple of good passes to his centre who quickly got around his defender and laid tries on Jacob’s side of the field.”
“We obviously got beaten by Western in Round 1, fairly convincingly, and probably the most significant change we made from that time is to bring Jesse into the side at five-eight and we didn’t drop a game from that time onwards.
“I suppose in our tighter squeeze was the weekend before when he potted the golden point field goal to get us where we were.
“The only down side was poor old Jake couldn’t pass the fitness test in time, but his contribution throughout the series were certainly well noted as well.”
BIDGEE BULLS 44 (Jesse Wighton 2, Max Burey, Solomona Faletagaloa-Mape, Jesse Corcoran, Zac Saddler, Nick Hay, Jacob Hardy, Cody Hodge tries; Liam Oakley 2, Faletagaloa-Mape 2 goals) def WESTERN RAMS 10 (Jai Doolan, Rick Nobes tries; Bayden Searle goal).
