THE Mudgee Dragons women's league tag team were satisfied by taking points away from their first Group 10 game after a six-all draw with Blayney Bears on Saturday.
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A draw was was a fitting result in the first-round game, with both sides having clearly worked on their defensive tagging skills in pre-season training.
Mudgee coach Ivan Giammarco said more than half of his side's training sessions were devoted to tagging practice.
“It's really paying dividends for our scramble tags and diving tags. So it's coming good at the moment,” he said.
Both Mudgee and Blayney are still working on their attacking combinations and will realise the importance of handling errors at vital moments.
Giammarco said overall he was pleased with his side's performance.
“We had a scratchy first half and we put a bit of ball down, but in the second half we came out really wanting to win that game,” he said.
“One thing we've focused on is team cohesion and I spoke about that at half time and we needed to talk a bit more and once we did that I think we started to put it together. We were very quiet in that first half.”
It took 37 minutes before the game's first points and much to the delight of a large home crowd, Mudgee were first to cross.
On the back of repeat sets Mudgee's Hayley Joseph found a yawning gap to score under the posts before converting her own try.
But in almost the next play Blayney fullback Jess Toohey found a similar space and scores were level at 6-6.
“We talked about our urgency in defence. Like most teams do when they're in front they become comfortable and that was probably our downside, but mind you it was a very good individual try, that girl dodged three of four players to score,” Giammarco said.
“We have to make sure we turnaround and be ready to tag after we score.”
Mudgee earned possession deep in Blayney's half with about three minutes remaining and pressured the visitors' line before being denied a final and match-winning try.
Dummy half Peta Newsome was ruled to have dived at a defender’s legs to score a try, something which is not allowed in league tag.
MUDGEE DRAGONS 6 (Hayley Joseph try, goal) drew with BLAYNEY BEARS 6 (Jess Toohey try, goal)