GREATER Northern Tigers have had their Country Championship start put back a week.
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The Tiger Under 16 and 18 sides were to have played the East Coast Dolphins in Armidale this Saturday but will now play them the following Saturday, Greater Northern regional manager Scott Bone said.
“The finals will now be played before the City-Country game in Tamworth on May 8,” Bone said.
“We were going to play City-Country Under 18 and 16 games but that will be played later in the season.”
He said the draw for the Tiger junior teams remains the same.
“We still play the East Coast Dolphins in our first game,” he said.
“That’s at Armidale on April 9, then we go to Scone to play Central Coast on the 16th and play Newcastle at Cessnock on the 23rd.”
The semi-finals will be held on the 30th (at a venue to be decided) and then the finals of both games at Scully Park on May 8.
At this stage the Tiger teams have had just the one change.
“KC Edmonds is out of the 18’s,” Bone said of the towering young Inverell star forward.
“He’s moved to Newcastle to play with Wests and probably their Newcastle Under 18s as well.
“Singleton’s Mark Fogarty has come in for him.”
There may also be a change to the Under 16s but that is not official as yet.
“We probably won’t replace him,” Bone said.
“We originally picked 20 players for both squads.
“You can only play 17 with an 18th man.”
Both squads trained last Friday in Tamworth under coaches Peter Stevens (18s) and Gary Jones (16s) and return for another session this Friday (5.30pm start).
“The first session was a good one,” Bone said.
“We had a welfare session as well and were lucky enough to have had Dennis Moran, Ben Smith and Tommy Learoyd-Lahrs there as well.
“Dennis played 17s for Northern Division while Tommy and Ben both played 18s for the Division before they also went to the NRL.
“We’re very lucky to have three guys like that to have come through our junior sides to come back and have a talk with all our boys.”