Last week RugbyWA sent the states best U15s and U16s teams over to Brisbane and Canberra to compete in the national Junior Gold Cup and Junior Rugby Championship.
Junior Rugby Championship (U16s)
The RugbyWA State U16s team had a strong start to the Junior Rugby Championship blasting out of the gates to beat a very strong Queensland Blue side.
However, coming into their second match they were shocked by a very skillful NSW Gen Blue side who took the WA boys by surprise with a 42-point win.
Learning from this game RugbyWA put in two very solid performances against ACT and the Australian Barbarians however couldn’t come away with a win in either narrowly missing out in both games.
Aidan Mcdonagh was a standout over the four games playing extremely well on the defensive side of the ball, given best forward by the coaches Mcdonagh also received the players player reward outlining his leadership in this U16s group.
Another key player was Luke-David Wells-Talamaivao playing in the number ten jersey, Wells-Talamaivao’s ability to hold the backline together as well as create space was unmatched in the competition.
Coming out of the competition Wells-Talamaivao is looking like one of the best prospects to play at fly-half from the WA pathway system.
This JRC competition is a big one for the state U16s team looking to impress edging closer to the national U18s selection and despite a sixth place finish don’t be surprised to see a number of these players in the Australian U18s team over the next few years.
Results
RugbyWA 22 def Queensland Blue 14
NSW Gen Blue def 66 def RugbyWA 24
ACT 31 def RugbyWA 29
Australian Barbarians 33 def RugbyWA 19
Junior Gold Cup (U15s)
With this year’s Junior Gold Cup being split into Northern and Southern Conferences RugbyWA got well acquainted with Queensland Rugby Union playing all their three teams throughout the tournament.
Coming out of the gate WA started slow going down in their first two touch matchups against Queensland Blue and White.
Nathan Tahu and Kaiso Pa had solid performances in the first two games scoring through both tries and conversions in the first two games.
Coming into the second half of the competition the Under 15s defiantly built on their first two performances by taking home a win in their third game against Queensland Red followed by a massive victory over the National Indigenous team.
Ryan McGloin was solid in WA’s nine-point win over Queensland scoring the first try of the match, RugbyWA continued to dominate the match with tries following from Justin Talemaira and Terence Doyle.
The final match of the tour ended with RugbyWA having a colossal win over the National Indigenous team winning by 62 points.
Tries came from left, right and center however Zachariah Siulepa was the only player in the team able to bag a double.
Finishing third in the Northern Conference the RugbyWA U15s were pleased with their performance however they are aware of the long journey ahead of them before they can be selected for national outfits and will continue their individual development over the next few years.
Results
Queensland Blue 52 def RugbyWA 10
Queensland White 28 def RugbyWA 22
RugbyWA 19 def Queensland Red 10
RugbyWA 62 def National Indigenous 0
RugbyWA would like to thank the Future Force Foundation for their continued support of the RugbyWA state program.
RugbyWA would also like to acknowledge Fit to Travel for flying the players east to compete.
