THE Moree Boomerangs put on a carnival on Saturday when they played host to the Warialda Wombats, winning all three games by convincing margins.
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The first grade side bounced back from its first loss of the season last week to beat the Wombats 40-16, while the reserves continued their title defence in dominant fashion and the girls posted their first win of the season.
Coach Chris Binge said his first grade team was looking at building into the season and focused on structure and consistency.
“Because we’ve been successful over the last few seasons there is a lot of expectations that we are going to go and blow teams apart by 60 or 70 points,” Binge said. “But we’re not focused on that, we’re focused on building into the season.
“You don’t win premierships in May.”
Binge said his 2015 squad was a different team to that which claimed the last two premierships.
“To be honest we haven’t had the same starting side on all season,” he said. “So over the next six or seven weeks we’ll look to settle on a team and then we’ll look to turn it on once we get closer to the semi-finals.”
The coach said the weekend’s performance was one of two halves.
“We went out there looking to gain the ascendency by being patient and grinding out the first half,” Binge said. “We didn’t set the world on fire, but we were focused on getting our structure right and getting a bit more stability, which we did.”
Going into the sheds leading 16-6, the ‘Rangs came out looking to play with a bit more spark and were rewarded with two tries within the opening minutes as they ran away convincing winners.
“In the second half we really put it to Warialda and executed sets and held our structures,” he said.
“We scored a try in the first minute and then one again not long after.”
Binge said the best on ground was debutant Brett Wright, with the centre providing solid defence and sparkling in attack.
“Toby Key is also playing the best footy I’ve seen him play for a couple of years and he is providing an outstanding combination with our other forwards, big Pete Duncan and Madison Smith.”
Earlier, the reserves put on the most dominant performance of the day, thumping Warialda 64-0 as they continued their undefeated start to the season.
The women’s league tag put on a second which Binge hopes can turn their season around.
“It’s been a slow start to the season and it took us 25 minutes to get going on Saturday,” Binge said.
But after being a try-apiece at half time the team put on what Binge described as their first polished performance of the season.
“It was a near perfect half of footy,” he said. “We finally converted what we’ve been doing at training into a game situation, and hopefully that will be a turning point in our season.”
Binge said fullback Shai-Lee Smith was best on ground.