RUGBY
Tigers Roar Again
On Saturday September 6th, in an astonishing display of power and precise, the Sunbury Tigers retained the Victorian Rugby League First Grade Championship with a 48 to 16 win over the Casey Warriors.
It was a true team effort, one that encapsulated a year of hard work. Head Coach and President, Julian Keddy spoke to Andrew Bishara about making history and what’s going to happen in 2015…
Did you think at the start of the season that the Tigers could make it back-to-back?
“Nah obviously, there were a few good teams going around and early on, we thought we might struggle. But the boys picked themselves up. So it’s fantastic to be finally able to do it.”
Did the coaching staff and the club do anything differently this season after you claimed the championship in 2013?
“No, no we stuck to playing the same style. You know you don’t change a winning formula and you just keep pushing on. And that’s what we did.”
How did you keep the players motivated, but at the same time on their feet after winning it the first time?
“We just talked to them and told them. You just can’t think you can go winning week in, week out, it's just not going to happen. You can’t just do what you want, you've got to stick to the patterns and the gameplan.”
What did you think was the team's greatest strength this season?
"It was our all round performance. We just had a good consistent team throughout the year. We just looked at getting through the season..."
Eltham Join the Invincibles
On August 16th, the Eltham Rugby Club entered the history books. A ndrew Bishara finds out why.
There was never any doubt that it would complete the job.
“We set the benchmark pretty early in the year by smashing every team and of course, we were the team to beat,” says Eltham Rugby Club Captain Dan Hall.
“There was a lot of pressure on us to go the whole way and to lose the grand final,
it was on our minds.
“But we had a pretty relaxed attitude. A few of us had breakfast before the game and we remained pretty calm and cool before it.”
Whatever nerves the team had when it ran onto the Box Hill rugby pitch on that fateful day in August, were clearly not there to see. After a bruising eighty minutes, the VRU Senior 2A Grand Final score read Eltham Rugby Club 30 – Kiwi Hawthorn 12.
It meant that Eltham joined the Hall of Legends as Invincibles because after fifteen games and two finals, it finished the season unbeaten. Played seventeen, won seventeen. An unbeaten season.
“It’s pretty good because we’ve been working on it for two years now,” says Hall, who has been Captain for the past three seasons."
“We’ve been up and down for the last few years, so for us to go unbeaten, it’s pretty good."
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