ROBB College showed a lot can change in a week on
Saturday.
Beaten 26-nil by Armidale last week, the students turned the tables – and tipped over a few cupboards as well – in their rematch, thrashing the Blues 52-3.
“We put it all together for 80 minutes,” Robb coach Gordon Williams said.
There was probably only about five minutes he counted they were on the back foot but they “ground their way out of it” and, like the Blues had done to them last week, they kept the Blues tryless.
“We knew it was a game we really needed to win,” Williams said.
They had lost their last couple of games heading in but Wiliams couldn’t have asked a lot more of them.
“Everything clicked,” he said.
“It was a great team effort – everyone did their job.
“The breakdown work was excellent and the attack in the backs was excellent.”
They were both things they needed to fix from last week and the attacking improvement was evident on the scoreboard, with Josh Carter, Tom Kent, Jake Smith, Nathan Banks, Harry Hamilton, Ben Prior and Chris Parker all finding the line.
Their defence was also very good, Williams said.
He thought there were a couple of factors that contributed to the turnaround.
Last week they were missing a few regulars and then had to move players out of position to cover for injuries.
That wasn’t the case on Saturday, although they did shift Smith from number eight to outside centre, where he had a “blinder”.
They also had a week’s training under their belts.
The other big difference was that they were on the front foot for a lot of the game and were more consistent in their performance.
“We played 75 minutes of good footy instead of 40,” Williams said.
Prop Will Chaffey was good up front and picked up the three points, with Prior on the wing receiving the two.
The one was shared between Josh Barron, Henry Noble and Smith.
Across town, UNE Barbarians chalked up their third win against St Albert’s this season with a 16-nil success
“We followed on from the turnaround in the second half last week,” Baa Baas coach Dan Dooner said.
He said it was a game in which they did the “hard yards”.
It wasn’t flashy but they did the things they needed to do.
The first half was tight, with Baa Baas only up 5-nil at the break.
“We’d stagnated a bit in the first half,” Dooner said.
“We played the first 15 in their quarter but probably ended up playing the last quarter in our half.”
Like they did the week before though, they lifted their intensity early in the second half and got on the front foot again.
Their defence was again a feature and to not concede a try was a great effort, especially against Albies.
