RUGBY UNION
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WITH their Central West Rugby Union finals hopes now officially exterminated, CSU will head to Orange City’s Pride Park tomorrow trying to salvage some pride of their own.
Just three weeks of the competition remain and Orange City still have plenty to play for as they jostle for position within the top three alongside Orange Emus and Dubbo ’Roos.
CSU coach James McLaren says that after their faint finals chances were extinguished by their 33-5 defeat to ’Roos, the attention of his players has turned to other goals.
“Retrospectively we can look back at games we should have won or competed better in, and we know that those are where we went wrong as far as finals go, but that isn’t the be-all and end-all,” he said.
“There will be a number of players move on next season, and a number who come in. But it has been interesting to see the older guys talking about playing their last games together and wanting to finish well.
“Usually when players are saying that, they are 34 or 35. These guys are in their early 20s and dealing with the likelihood that they won’t play with their mates again, so they want to finish well.
“It has been enjoyable to see the way they socialise and talk to one another, though I’m happy to keep that aspect at arm’s length after seeing some of the dresses they wore in Dubbo last week. Crimes against fashion.”
City turned heads two weeks ago when they put triple figures on Mudgee, a team CSU had beaten by only a point themselves a fortnight earlier.
But Narromine blunted them to some degree last Saturday as the Lions were held to a 26-20 victory.
CSU were unlucky not to upset the Lions in their first encounter of the season at University Oval, and a similar performance to their first half against Dubbo last Saturday will give them at least a sniff of causing a boilover.
In that match they led 5-0 just moments before half-time.
“It was quite humbling to watch just how well we played in the first half last week, but it is hard to wax lyrical about it too much when we still conceded 33 points for the match,” McLaren said.
“We did well but we still have a long way to go. What was good to see though, was that finally we were doing the things we’ve spoken about at training for more than five minutes at a time, we did them for nearly 40.
“I hope the players got good benefit out of seeing what they were capable of. The score was disappointing, but they’re just numbers on a board.
“City will prove to be an incredibly difficult assignment, and I really don’t want us to be running out of numbers on the scoreboard because we’re getting hammered.”
CSU: 1 Evan Binney, 2 Gota Wykamp, 3 Michael Coates, 4 Sam Robertson, 5 Pat Murphy, 6 Nick Dutton, 7 Michael Thompson, 8 Hugh Medway (c), 9 Josh Gemmell, 10 Nick Rutherford, 11 Pat Hill, 12 Blake Ridges, 13 Tom Keft, 14 Lachie Brown, 15 Tennyson Vance