JARROD Simpson gave his tick of approval to the Orange Emus club after it provided him with his first rugby premiership win in seven grand finals on Saturday.
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At Narromine’s Cale Oval, the Emus built on their 12-5 half-time lead to beat Bathurst Bulldogs 24-10 in the third grade decider.
Simpson was transferred in his employment from Dubbo to Orange earlier this year and headed straight to Endeavour Oval to link up with Emus.
He didn’t have much luck with his goal kicking on Saturday but he was tidy at scrum-half in a tried and experienced outfit that is fairly used to playing in finals football.
“Third grade is third grade wherever you play it but they’re a great bunch of guys here at Emus and I’ve enjoyed my first season with them,” Simpson said.
“As you can imagine, it’s pretty cold down there of a night, so we haven’t had too many training sessions. But we did finish minor premiers and everyone really knuckled down to going well in the finals.
“Today’s been good and after playing 13 seasons with the Dubbo Kangaroos and losing seven or eight grand finals, I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be.
“I know for a fact that Mark Daley (a former first grade premiership-winning player with Emus and Roos) had been geeing up a few of our guys this week, saying that I was bad news and they’d be taking a risk having me in their grand final side.
“So to Dales ... this medal’s for you.”
But on a more serious front, it was the Emus as we expected them to be in the grand final.
Their forwards tore into their work but the Bulldogs gave it their best to cause an upset result.
The Greens’ composure was good and so was their pick and drive and that led to them scoring two of their four tries.
But it was the Bulldogs who struck first when flanker Andrew Boydell score down the blind side.
It wasn’t until the 27th minute that Emus got back on even terms when Jake Ruddy raced onto a good pass served up by Peter Bell and then just before half-time, Emus scored a push-over try which was credited to Ben Ruddy. Simpson converted and it was a seven-point advantage to Emus at the break.
A further try to veteran Stu Brisbane increased the lead before Blake Tidswell did the early work for Ash Goninan’s try for the Bulldogs.
But conversions at both ends were hard to come by because of the swirling wind and five minutes from the end Luke Turner put the issue beyond doubt after the Emus’ forwards used the pick and drive again to advantage and the Bulldogs weren’t able to respond.
Dale Norris, the Bulldogs’ captain-coach, paid his players a wonderful compliment despite them not being able to deliver the goods for their club or supporters.
“We’ve had a sensational year and these footballers have been a pleasure to coach and even more fun to be with,” he said.
“Hopefully we can build on this year’s work and go from there.
“But due credit to Emus, they had more composure than us but we stuck it to them right till the end.”
❏ ORANGE EMUS 24 (Ben Ruddy, Jake Ruddy, Stuart Brisbane, Luke Turner tries; Jarrod Simpson 2 conv) def BATHURST BULLDOGS 10 (Andrew Boydell, Ash Goninan tries).
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