Narrabri Blues score their biggest win of the year before COVID puts a temporary stop to the season

COVID-19 has once again reared its ugly head and created more chaos for Group 4 Rugby League.

Group 4 announced on Sunday that it had postponed all matches scheduled to be played that day in the wake of a positive COVID-19 test for a Boggabri mine worker, which has since been clarified to have been a false positive.

In first grade, Boggabri Kangaroos were scheduled to host Kootingal Moonbi Roosters at Jubilee Oval while North Tamworth was to play at home against Werris Creek at Jack Woolaston Oval.

Both of those matches were cancelled and postponed, as were the respective reserve grade and ladies league tag games set to be played at both venues earlier in the day.

Saturday’s matches were unaffected by COVID-19 and all went ahead.

Boggabri and District Rugby League Football Club president Greg Haire told Group 4 Media he was made aware of the positive test early on Sunday morning and contacted the group immediately.

“I got a phone call at 7.30 [on Sunday] morning and we decided to postpone our game,” Haire said.

“We decided it was for the safety of everyone.”

Group 4 Rugby League then decided to postpone the other matches at Jack Woolaston Oval, said chairman Terry Psarakis.

“We decided to postpone all of today’s matches,” Psarakis told Group 4 Media.

“That’s it at the moment. We will be guided by NSW Health but we don’t want to put anyone at risk.

“It makes it awkward for us at the moment but we’re hoping we might be able to replay these postponed games on the spare weekend that was to have been the NRL game at Scully Park (August 21 and 22) between Wests Tigers and Cronulla.”

Meanwhile, this weekend’s round 14 games have also been put on hold after Tamworth went into lockdown yesterday.

While these are very uncertain times, there were no question marks over the Narrabri Rugby League Football Club first grade side’s ability to win under pressure on Saturday.

The Blues travelled to Tamworth where they defeated the Dungowan Cowboys 56-26 at Scully Park to go three points clear of Kootingal at the top of the table.

The Roosters do have a game in hand, but regardless of their results, a win in round 14 against North Tamworth Bears at Collins Park would earn the Narrabri club the first grade minor premiership as well as the right to host the Group 4 Rugby League major semi-finals.

The Narrabri men won their round 13 match at a canter on Saturday after racing out to a 30-6 lead on the half-hour mark which became 42-10 at half-time.

The Blues were outscored 16-14 in the second stanza but the damage was already done and they secured a comfortable 56-26 victory which was their 11th of the campaign.

Narrabri outscored Dungowan 10 tries to five and eight goals to three in the 30-point rout which became their largest winning margin this season.

Returning prop Caleb Binge starred with two of those tries, both of which he scored in the opening 20 minutes, and he also earned three best and fairest points.

Five-eighth Hayden Bell impressed in his return to the halves from centre and was involved in a handful of his side’s tries. He picked up two best and fairest points and also scored a four-pointer.

The side’s other seven tries were shared between Damon Gleeson, Lachlan Trindall, Dennis Gordon, Mark Patterson, Toby Bentley, Sam Sadler and Brendan Davey, then there was Todd Nichols who added 16 points off the boot with eight goals.

Blues captain-coach Jake Rumsby was pleased with his side’s start in the round 13 victory.

“We wanted to start well, haven’t done it all year,” Rumsby told Group 4 Media.

“We did that today. Showed we can do it, that we can play good when we control the ball.

“Everything worked well.”

Rumsby said that his team still had a few things to work on following a slow second stanza.

“We talked about starting well again in the second half at half-time,” Rumsby told Group 4 Media.

“But we didn’t have the same intensity and made plenty of mistakes.

“There’s a few things we have to work on for next week (the now-postponed round 14 game against North Tamworth).

“That’s going to be a huge game for us at home to North Tamworth.

“We can be number one if we win it.

“We want to have a home semi for the first time in a long time, that’s what we’ve been training for all year and we need to keep winning to have that.”

The other round 13 first grade match played on Saturday was contested at Moree where the Boars drew 32-all with the visiting Gunnedah Bulldogs.

That was the score after 80 minutes of play before both coaches shook hands following a gentleman’s agreement which meant that no golden point extra time period took place and both teams received a point each.

Meanwhile, Narrabri Rugby League Football Club went down in the other three grades in round 13. The club’s reserve grade side forfeited to Dungowan, the under-18s team lost 40-16 and the ladies league tag team went down 100-0.