Hundreds of junior rugby union players descended on Scone last Sunday for the Scone Gala Day.
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The Bill Rose Complex was packed with teams from the Under 6s to Under 14s playing solid games of rugby.
The weather was magical and the boys made sure they dug deep on their home turf.
This weekend, teams head north-west for the Coonabarabran Gala Day.
As the moon was setting, the Bill Rose Complex was a hive of activity with the Scone Junior Rugby Club setting up for what was to be a day of exciting rugby.
The Scone Under 10 Blue team drew Tamworth 1, Gunnedah and Quirindi.
Tamworth are a big team but the mobility of the Scone team allowed us to start the Gala Day with a solid victory.
Our fast backs relished the work of our forwards with Will Crompton, Harry Faulkner, Nick Gallagher and Dan Crowther doing some great work in tight letting our backs get on the front foot scoring some skilful tries.
Aiden Cooper and Elliot Bull did some great work at the back cleaning up some of Scone’s loose ball and putting us back on the front foot.
Gunnedah was the most physical game we have played all year.
The Red Devils beat us in the ruck and were very strong in defence with our forwards struggling to make the advantage line.
Thomas Burnett played his first game in the forwards and, with his Mum’s approval, will see more time in tight five.
Some opportunistic tries to Roly Ward-Thomas, Cody Grimes and Heath Pitman gave Scone a narrow victory and a wake-up call for our third game.
Josh Crowther had a solid game at 5/8 showing a clean pair of heals on numerous occasions, either scoring tries or getting us back on the front foot after our forwards were out muscled in the breakdown.
The Quirindi game saw our lads play as a team and had a convincing win to finish off our home carnival.
Some excellent forward work led by ‘Snowball’ Crowther and the hard running Charlie Richardson let our backs all get over the line for some great team tries.
Max Patterson and Angus Beard played their best games of the day, both being able to transition from cleaning out to good strong running.
Finally a home carnival with a chance to entertain the locals and they didn’t disappoint.
Our first game was against Gunnedah.
With a mountain of possession in the first half the boys appeared to be setting up tents on the opposition try line, but due to some amazing defence we were held to a very tight score line finishing with a 4 to 2 win. Game two was against a Tamworth side with some very tall timber.
After the first game our boys were primed and ready to go, running the bigger Tamworth boys around.
Again maintaining plenty of possession and putting on a beautiful move saw every member of the backline touch the ball before eventually scoring out wide.
The end score line was 6 to 1 to the good guys.
In game three we took on the second Tamworth side and the boys were really in the mood now putting on some amazing running rugby, and the supporters were lapping it up.
The boys finished the day off nicely with a fantastic 9 to 1 victory.
Hamish White and Cooper Wilson played their best carnival of the year, and Hunter Ryan scored a bag full of tries.
Archie Brooker, Dan O’Regan, Hamish McCrae and Cal Winter tested the defence constantly.
The big boys Jimmy White, Lachlan Miller and Angus Davidson won plenty of ball at the breakdown and were bruising in defence.
Micheal Dunley and Angus Malone were constantly involved and looking for ball.
Final mention and try celebration of the year goes to Rourke Sharpe.
With a rescheduled Scone carnival, the under eights fielded three teams against a reduced Central North field with teams including Gunnedah, Quirindi and Tamworth.
Scone 1 had three hard fought games against Tamworth, Gunnedah and Quirindi.
The first two games against Tamworth and Gunnedah were a little one-sided with the opposition size being too much for the young Scone side.
The last game against Quirindi was a better match up with the two sides going try for try for most of the game.
Charlie Mitchell was a standout all day - strong in defence and I lost count of the tries he scored.
He was ably assisted by Lindsay Geary, Sam Lambley, Ted Saunders, Sam Gillett, Paul Russell, Ben Officer, Hunter Wild, Cooper Nicholl and Charlie Tydd.
All the boys improved immensely throughout the day.
Tydd cracked his maiden try in rugby after a barnstorming run through the Quirindi defence.
He was very pleased with his first piece of meat.
What a day! With the Scone 2 squad drawing games against Quirindi, Tamworth and Scone 3, there was a brilliant atmosphere for some solid rugby.
With a firm win against Quirindi, the boys strung together some great phase play to place a number of great tries.
The second game of the day saw the boys really step up another gear to match a very well-drilled, experienced Tamworth squad.
With the boys all putting in exceptional efforts in defence and attack, this allowed for an entertaining game.
The last game of the day was the local derby grudge match with Scone 2 vs Scone 3.
With the boys revving each other up all day long, there was sure to be plenty of passion involved in this match up and no one was left disappointed by the display of running rugby.
With Scone 2 definitely the firm underdog on the cards, you would have thought the score reflected the match up on paper.
But this could not have been further from the truth.
These boys played completely out of their weight division to take it to the more experienced squad and in many cases it came down to the luck of the bounce.
With sensational efforts put in by the whole squad, the team consisted of Jock McCosker, Hamish Davidson, Clay Atkinson, Jason Lighezzolo, Monty Ward-Thomas, George Patterson, Flynn Killman, Will Officer and Andrew Crowther.
