Kookaburras edge out Darling Downs in Border Cup thriller

The evergreen Pirates five-eighth slotted a field goal with only a couple of minutes remaining to kick the Kookaburras to a thrilling 26-23 win.

Their first victory in the fixture since its exception in 2014, it was all the sweeter for the Kookaburras after suffering one, three and five-point losses in their three previous meetings.

Fresh from a successful two match tour of Japan last month Darling Downs had headed in confident of maintaining their hold on the silverware, but the Kookaburras surprised even themselves to get their representative campaign off to a perfect start.

“It was very unexpected,” co-coach Tom Cullen said.

They only came together for the first time that morning and had to rope in a couple of Moree players to back up from their own trial and help out on the bench. Kookaburras 19s coach Tom Davidson also brought a couple of Inverell players over with him.

“It was a really rag-tag bunch,” Cullen said.

“In the warm-up players were introducing themselves to each other.”

But they seemed to thrive on that adversity.

“I think the fact of the difficult situation seemed to lift the fellas,” he said.

“It was a very gutsy performance particularly in defence.”

“The fellas were great in defence.”

In the end that was what won it for them.

They continually applied pressure, Cullen said, and led for most of the game, by as much as 13 points on a couple of occasions.

“They always bounced back in the couple of minutes before each quarter ended,” Cullen said.

He said in the final quarter they had a couple of tough penalty kicks they were unsuccessful with, before Moodie assessed the situation perfectly and from about 20m out, delivered the winning blow.

His combination in the midfield with Simon Newton was a real feature.

“They played well off each other,” Cullen said.

The whole backline looked very slick, he said, former St Alberts star and new Moree recruit Dan Sweeney also impressing at outside centre.

Sione Kamoto meanwhile “had a blinder” in the forwards, and was one of the Kookaburras two try-scorers.

Will Robinson (Barraba) also really stepped up, he said in what was a good starting point to move forward from.

“Our set piece needs a lot of work,” Cullen said.

They would have lost eight or nine lineouts. That wasn’t helped by not having a recognised thrower.

While hoping to have a few more players from the premiers put their hands up to be involved, and initially a bit disappointed with the numbers, Cullen and Hunter Harley took a lot of encouragement out of the performance, as did the players.

“The feedback from the players was there is a really good feeling in the group,” Cullen said.