The 2021 Santos Festival of Rugby has come and gone, and the event well and truly lived up to the hype.
The NSW Waratahs and Queensland Reds produced an eye-catching try-fest in Friday night’s pre-season game, the men’s sevens matches were explosive and entertaining, and the live music performed by bands such as Thirsty Merc had the crowd dancing in their seats.
It was exactly what the town needed after a COVID-19-affected year in 2020, when everyone’s lives were thrown into disarray.
There are an abundance of individuals and groups who were responsible for making the event a success, but none more so than Narrabri Rugby Club president Mick Coffey and his dedicated group of committee members.
Coffey was the junior club president last year when Narrabri was responsible for hosting the first junior carnival for the zone for 2020 coming out of COVID-19, so he was the perfect candidate to lead from the front the organisation of a larger event given the success of that junior carnival.
His efforts drew much admiration from both inside and outside the Narrabri Rugby Club.
Just as former Wallabies like Chris Latham and Michael Brial have done in the past, the Blue Boars helped put Narrabri on the national rugby union map.
Coffey told The Courier on Monday that he was struggling to find the words to describe how proud he was of the Santos Festival of Rugby.
“I genuinely don’t have the words to describe how fantastic the whole thing was, how great it’s been” Coffey said.
“We got lots of verbal thanks and handshakes over the weekend, but we’ve just started to receive emails and messages from people too, they are taking the time to properly thank us and I’m pretty proud.
“The club, the committee, all the volunteers and everyone who helped out, it’s something Narrabri is good at, we pulled it off.
“I cannot thank my committee enough, they all did so much hard work.
“There are a lot of other people around the club who volunteered a lot of their time too, we really appreciate it.
“Our Narrabri Shire Council was great too, the limited time for preparation did not deter them, they just helped get everything done.
“This will go down in the club’s history as something that will never be forgotten.
“From talking to people in the lead up we knew people were excited for an event to come to town so they could get out and have some fun.
“And they got that.”
Coffey was the busiest man at the ground on Friday night and was unable to watch the entire contest between the two Super Rugby sides, but of what he was able to watch he enjoyed the action
“To be honest I need to sit down and watch the live stream,” Coffey said.
“I didn’t see a lot of the game.
“I was busy talking to people and making sure things were running smoothly, but I was able to sit down and focus on the game for about 15 minutes in the last 20 minutes and I was really impressed.
“I’m an old front rower so I loved some of those scrums and really good set piece action.
“There were lots of tries too, people are often critical of high-scoring games, but it was great.”
Coffey labelled the men’s sevens selection and preparation tournament, organised by Australian Men’s Sevens head coach Tim Walsh ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, as a major success.
“I thought it was the perfect thing to be running for the bulk of the weekend,” Coffey said.
“There were a lot of people there who weren’t necessarily rugby fans, they came because people have just been crying out for an event.
“The sevens is a bit like T20s in cricket, it’s easy to get people engaged because it’s upbeat and fast and there’s lots of action.”
Coffey added that the live entertainment from local musician Elsie Ford, as well as bands Thirsty Merc, Georgia June and Furnace and the Fundamentals was incredibly popular and a great addition to the event.
On Sunday, the Narrabri Rugby Club began packing up their equipment, as did the vendors involved in the festival.
Coffey predicted that by Wednesday, the grandstand would be all that was left of the Dangar Park additions for the Santos Festival of Rugby, with the exception of what would remain at the club’s home ground included the new lights.
However, Coffey said that the memories of the festival would last for a long time.
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