Canowindra hold back Condo in the rugby match after the glow. Photo by Federation Fotos.
On Saturday night following another successful night of markets and balloon glow the Canowindra Pythons kicked their 2012 season off against last year’s premiers Condobolin Rams.
With a few new faces and plenty of old ones the Pythons have had a pretty hard pre-season under new coach Rob Clulow and assistants Brendan Nash, Graham Rice and Rob Morris also helping out.
It’s been great to see that the club has been training well with good numbers turning up both Tuesday and Thursday nights.
The game started well for the Pythons with the forwards dominating their opponents both at the break downs and especially at the scrums.
The Canowindra backs showed that they are not afraid to run the ball and definitely entertained the crowd with some dazzling moves, though a bit of rust was showing in the first game with both sides spilling a lot of pill.
With the Pythons on the attack for the first five minutes and seemed likely they may open their account on the score board early though Condo had other ideas, after the Pyhtons gave away a few penalties Condo found themselves within kicking distance and took the 3 points. Not long after slotting the first penalty goal Condo slotted over another one to give them a six to nil lead after about 20 minutes of some hard football.
New half back Will Ryan lead the forwards around well and set the backs up well with some great decision making from the back of the rucks and also proved he is not afraid to run the ball with some great runs from all over the park.
With the front row of Dude Williams, Stu Gavin and our new Irish import Patty Gallway our scrum was never in danger of going backwards.
This soon lead to some good field position and Tom Abbott held a great ball up for Clint Oborn to storm through and score the first try for the year. Tom converted to put the boys in front going into the break 7-6.
In the second half the local boys really came out firing and through Benny Collins, Huw Wills and Adam Nash the Pythons found themselves making easy metres up the centre of the field though as with the first half silly penalties or dropped ball cost us any advantage.
Through some great defence and alot of attacking raids through Aarron Wooley, Dan Muldoon and Mitch Collins the Pythons were able to keep Condo tryless. Even when Adam Nash was given a yellow card with 15 minutes to go the defence of Luke Watt and Tom Abbott made sure that there were no breaks from the Condo backs.
Tom Abbott was able to convert a penalty goal with only a few minutes to go to give the Pythons a great first victory over competition favourites Condo 10-6.
Points for the day went to Tom Abbott got three, Will Ryan picked up two points in his debut game for the Pythons, Dude Williams got one for an impressive 80 minutes and another player on debut Scott Gill proved he has the goods with a very impressive first game for the Pythons getting players player and one point.
This weekend the Pythons travel to Blayney for another tough game against last year’s grand finalists.
The Rugby bus will be travelling over with supporters encouraged to hop on.
The bus will be leaving around 1:15pm from the Royal.