Young Yabbies Rugby Union Club’s junior grades have proven to be the teams to beat in their respective divisions after both placing second in the Canberra Rugby competition.
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With the regular season now over, both sides have qualified for finals in their first year in the new competition.
In their last game of the regular season on Saturday the Under 18 Yabbies placed seven tries on their Daramalan opponents to win 39-5.
Coach Wally Everdell said the boys put in the best half of rugby they’ve played all year to head into half time up 27-nil, but two yellow cards in second half allowed Daramalan to sneak onto the scoreboard.
“They played extremely well in the first half in terms of enthusiasm, good accurate passing, getting the ball wide into space and allowing the backs to score,” Everdell said.
“But we had a period there of 20 minutes where the team was a bit disrupted and that’s when Daramalan started to get back into the game.”
The win earned the 18s a place in the semi-finals against Radford College, with Everdell predicting it to be their toughest game.
“I believe they’ll be the hardest team to beat,” he said.
“If we beat them I believe we should win [the competition], I don’t think the grand final would be any harder.
“We have a very good team with some very talented and capable players, and they’re playing now with confidence and each other.
“Once you’ve got confidence in the other players around you, you start to play as a team because you’re going to pass them the ball rather than trying to do it yourself, and I think that’s what’s happening now.”
He said if the 18s bring the same level of enthusiasm to Saturday’s game as they did last weekend, they’ll earn themselves a ticket straight through to the grand final.
“They’re playing as as a Division One team and in doing so are putting some big scores on the Division Two teams,” Everdell said.
“In four games we’ve probably scored about 180 points and conceded around 50 points.
“It basically justifies us being in the Canberra competition, it justifies what they’ve done and the effort they've made to get us down there because we’re strengthening their competition.
“A lot of the non-Canberra teams are playing in Division Three, and the Young Yabbies are by far the strongest non-Canberra side.
“We are borderline Division One, there’s no doubt about that.”
The 16s kick off at 12pm against Marist, followed by the 18s at 1.30pm at Queanbeyan.
