Narrabri Touch Inc’s open women’s representative team recently travelled to Port Macquarie where it competed at the 2019 NSW State Cup.

The Narrabri Yowies included 10 players from Narrabri and Wee Waa who all play in the local Narrabri touch competition on Monday afternoons.

Two players from Inverell and another from Port Macquarie also linked up with the local players for the tournament.

The side competed in the Women’s Open B division and played seven games across two days on Friday and Saturday, winning twice, drawing once and losing the other four.

The Yowies were placed in Pool J for their three Friday matches and they started off in style with a convincing win, downing the Carlingford Cyclones 5-1.

The Narrabri team was then defeated 6-1 and 5-0 in its next two games by Bankstown Sports One and Wallsend Wolves respectively.

Those three results saw the Yowies place third in the pool and qualify for the plate competition.

They were placed into Pool B of the Plate series and won their first game 4-3 against Doyalson Dragons, before drawing 3-all with Taree Flames Two in game two.

In the third pool game Narrabri went down 6-0 against eventual Plate semi-finalists Taree Flames One.

Narrabri then played a fourth and final Plate Pool B game which saw it come up against Doyalson in a game where the winner would progress to the Plate quarter finals.

This time the Dragons defeated the Yowies 2-1 in a close contest which saw the Narrabri team’s campaign come to an end.

The team’s oldest player Cathy Conomos, who covered all positions on the field throughout the weekend, was voted the Yowies’ players’ player.

Team coach Chris Swaddle was full of praise for both Conomos and the entire team.

“During our time there the girls really took on everything that I said and we improved with every game we played,” Swaddle said.

“They were a great group of girls to take away.

“Being here in a small town it’s a massive thing to even take the chance to go away to a State Cup.

“By the time we got there I knew that we were ready for it and I was very proud of them.

“The very first game we played we got a win so in all of our minds we knew we belonged there. It was then pretty amazing to see how they improved from the first game to the last.

“At the end of it we gave a players’ player which was Cathy Conomos who was our oldest player.

“She played in every position from the first game to the last game and she just had a really, really good tournament.

“We also had five girls in the team under the age of 17 who were all playing at their first State Cup, and for them to do so well at 15 and 16 was quite a big achievement so I was really proud of that as well.”

Swaddle said that the side gelled well after several months of training leading up to the tournament.

“We’ve trained since July, once a week for an hour or so,” he told The Courier.

“It got a bit hard with a few of the girls unavailable with work and things like that or being out of town.

“But then during the last month we ramped things up with a few longer sessions and a weekend session where everyone made it down for a session together for couple of hours on a Saturday morning.”

Swaddle said that he enjoyed coaching the team and travelling to be a part of the State Cup.

“Touch is a massive passion for me I really enjoy the game and I have done for a long time now,” he said.

“I love being a coach.

“In our team we had an awesome bunch of girls, a mixture of some younger ones and some older ones.“Right from the start they wanted to have a proper crack and they committed to the training in order to do that.”

Swaddle, a teacher at Narrabri High School, is leaving Narrabri at the end of the year.

He said that while it was disappointing that he would not have the chance to coach at the 2020 State Cup, he was proud to hear the team state its intentions to return for another crack next year.

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