Dubbo CYMS wins reserve grade premiership
Nick Guthrie - September 11, 2016
A powerful first 20 minutes and dogged defence late on secured Dubbo CYMS the 2016 reserve grade premiership at Caltex Park on Sunday.
It was physical, bruising and heated at times but the Fishies hung on to score a 12-10 victory, with Hamish Astill’s individual try-scoring effort midway through the second half the decisive moment.
CYMS coach Joel Rapley, a man whose surname is synonymous with the club, couldn’t speak highly enough about his side’s second half efforts.
“It’s been our defence all year,” he said.
“We haven’t been a team that scores a million points every week but you’ll see in the for and against that we don’t get many scored against us and that’s a credit our side and how hard they work.
“It’s bloody great and I’ve got my brother (Kaide) in the side and it means a lot to us so it’s great to win it at the end.”
Former Cronulla Sharks flyer Isaac Gordon capitalised on CYMS’ dominance early to open the scoring and Nick Karydis’ conversion, right in front of the Macquarie faithful, made it 6-0.
That’s the way things stayed until the break, with bruising tackles the hallmark of the first half.
It didn’t take long for the Raiders to get going in the second stanza and Bradley Spencer, a real standout in 2016, stepped his way through to score.
The Raiders then hit the lead when replacement Leroy Toomey showed great strength to power across but their 10-6 lead didn’t last too long.
Barely five minutes later Hamish Astill, who was no certainty to play after being named in first grade, darted once again from dummy half and sliced his way through the defence to score right next to the uprights.
Karydis converted and while things got heated from there on and there were a number of skirmished which stopped play, the Fishies defence never waivered.
“We spoke about it before the game, to watch Hamish out of dummyhalf and he scored and that was probably the turning point,” Macquarie captain-coach Adam McDermott said.
“We had got back into the game into the second half and then we slackened off but credit to CYMS, they kept coming at us all day and capitalised on our errors.”
Rapley also singled out Jayden Merritt and Albert Wilson out for praise, while Trey Doolan and warhorse Brett Warwick were strong throughout the match for the valiant Raiders.
But it was CYMS lifting the Fred King Cup, much to the delight of the coach.
“It’s a bit unbelievable really,” Rapley said.
“We knew it was going to be tight and we prepared for that but the heart was still going a million miles an hour.”