ST Pat’s won a hard-fought pre-season contest against Forbes in the annual Brendan ‘Stubby’ Collits Memorial game held at Ashwood Park on Saturday, winning 20-18.
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After losing the inaugural version of the match a year ago in Forbes, the Saints had to work hard for their win and were forced to defend on their own line for lengthy periods in the last quarter of the game, but did enough to come away with the victory.
“It was a pretty scrappy sort of game. It was a good hit-out but there is still three weeks to go before we play our first game in Group 10 and there’s a lot we need to work on,” St Pat’s centre Mick Armstrong said.
“Both teams certainly used the game as a trial and a chance to try out some new things, but they were both well aware of the occasion and it was played in good spirit. Forbes would have used it as a trial match and we certainly did too.”
St Pat’s coach Kurt Hancock has taken every opportunity during the pre-season to experiment with his line-up and has been able to get good minutes into most of his potential players.
Saturday was no exception, and from his vantage point Armstrong was pleased with what he saw.
“I’m not too sure what sort of line-up Kurt has in his mind for the first round, but there were a lot of guys who did well on the weekend,” he said.
“Garry Reilly only played a handful of minutes but I’m sure he’ll be in there somewhere. Tim Holman played a good game and spent time at fullback and at five-eighth and fitted in really well.
“We had to work pretty hard. It was a tight match the whole way through and Forbes had a lot of ball towards the end of the match.
“We made a lot of mistakes and handed them some good opportunities.
“That’s definitely something we have to work pretty hard on between now and the start of the competition.”
Armstrong nominated Holman as one of the best players on the paddock while new recruit Joe Batchelor once more impressed, winning the man of the match award for his playmaking role.
“They were probably the two best but everybody was thereabouts, that’s the impression I got from where I was, anyway,” he said.
“That’s the last match for us now before the season starts. We have a bye in round one so we’ll have a break over the Easter weekend and then hit the paddock pretty hard to make sure we get rid of those messy aspects of our game.
“We want to be 100 per cent ready to go when we meet Oberon in round two.”
