NORTHERN Inland showed some promising glimmers in their Junior Gold Cup 15s’ opening loss to Hunter at Gunnedah on Sunday.
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The 17-7 result was a big improvement on last year’s effort and for most of the game there was only a try in it.
“They put 30 on us last year,” co-coach Jeff Watt said.
He’d said leading into the game the boys were raring to go and they came out accordingly.
“I thought we started pretty well,” he said.
“We lost our way a bit, then we got going again.”
Hunter scored the only points of the first half, and kicked out to a 10-nil lead early in the second.
But the Bushrangers fought their way back, Josh McLaughlin slipping through from a penalty quick tap.
It was reward for the home side for their territorial dominance following that second Hunter try.
Jock Thompson added the extras to make it 10-7 with about 15 to go.
Hunter hit back not long after the final drinks break though, winger Tom Ingram running onto a pinpoint cut -out and in for his second, the conversion pushing them out to a 10-point lead.
Watt said for their first hit-out it wasn’t a bad effort.
“We just did some dumb things,” Watt said.
“We were offside four or five times, which was completely unnecessary and we didn’t shift the ball wide enough.”
They have some sharp outside backs and, when they did get it to them, they made good ground but it didn’t get there often enough.
“We got cluttered up on the inside channels,” Watt said.
“We were taking the ball to the line too much.”
They also made too many simple mistakes and dropped balls at inopportune times.
“That comes down to first- game nerves, wanting to score and lack of experience,” Watt said.
“I’m sure we’ll be improved for the run.”
Their work at the breakdown was a real feature. They were voracious there and won a lot of ball back.
“Our defence at the breakdown was really good and our breakdown work securing our own ball was good,” Watt said.
“And when we did get into space we were quite good.”
He was also pleasantly surprised by how they went in the set pieces.
He was a bit worried after they’d lost prop Ryan Potter in the warm-up.
They suffered another set-back early into the game, losing outside centre Cooper Harris.
That threw their structure out a bit in both attack and defence.
The defence was a bit mixed. They scrambled pretty well but were caught napping a bit when Hunter shifted the ball wide.
Watt said captain Toby Maslen was good. Joe Tufrey at hooker and McLaughlin also had strong games.
McLaughlin started on the wing and then moved into the centres.
They now head to Sydney for a double header.
