In front of a large crowd in Bingara’s Gwydir Oval, Gwydir took on Tingha in the A Grade minor semi and in a very intense start to the game saw both teams going hammer and tongs at each other and finally Tingha cracked when Dave McGrady grubber kicked and Tyler Dennison pounced onto the ball and after some quick interchange passing Steve Garrett went over with Ashley Churchland converting both – suddenly it was 12-0 in favour of the locals.
Tingha doesn’t lie down and Michael Schneider went over and then Andrew Blair picked up a loose ball after he’d put up a massive bomb making the score 12-10. It didn’t matter how hard both teams tried they couldn’t crack each others’ defence and this remained the half time score.
An interesting start to the second half saw Matt Cleal come off with a bad head cut before Mitch Porter sliced through and used his Inspector Gadget extender arm to put the ball over the line.
The game then became a dour struggle with each team trying everything to score but in the end it was Nathan McGrady who went over out wide. Then a brilliant break by Sam Cooper put David McGrady over. A penalty kick by Ashley Churchland saw the final score 30-10.
Gwydir although not brilliant on the day played well enough to win, but will have to improve to beat the two teams, Boomerangs and Glen Innes, who are playing out the Major Semi next weekend.
Best were Mick Hodges, Brendan Critchlow, Steve Garrett and Casey Bowman in the forwards while Sam Armstrong who received Players Player, Dave McGrady, Mitch Porter, Ashley Churchland and Harold Duncan all played well in the backs.
In the Reserve Grade match Gwydir took on Glen Innes. Things started badly when Will Newberry went through some paper thin defence to score and 8 minutes later Travis Patterson did the same, followed by Andrew Grob going over making the score 0-16.
Finally Gwydir got a bit of field position and their hooker Ash Thompson went over and this put the locals on a roll and Brayden McGrady produced a bit of a juggling act to go over out wide. Late in the half Grob went in for his second to make it 10-22 at the break.
After doing some stupid things in the first half Steve Calmen made amends by scoring in the left hand corner. Rocky Hall kicked the conversion from the sideline. This remained the score for a long while before DJ Patterson raced over. Lucks a fortune in football and after the boys had gone over but they had put a foot over the dead ball line and the try was disallowed then Blocker Aleckson was held up over the line. Finally Todd Simpson went over and Hall converted but unfortunately this was the end of the section with Gwydir losing 26-22.
The boys had their chances but failed to capitalise. They had a good season and found some good players for the future. Other matches played on the day were League Tag Tingha 30 to Boomies12. In the U18s Uralla defeated Tingha 22 to 18.
