THIS year’s Central West Rugby Union colts grand final will be an all Bathurst affair after CSU took out Saturday’s preliminary final 23-0 against Mudgee.
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Undefeated minor premiers the Bathurst Bulldogs were the first through to the grand final, while CSU survived three weeks of sudden death rugby to join them.
The Bathurst rivals will go head-to-head at Orange’s Endeavour Oval this Saturday.
“It’s fantastic to have two Bathurst sides in the grand final. It just shows how strong rugby is in Bathurst in our juniors,” CSU coach Rob Danelon said.
“We need to keep building on that and the town of Bathurst – on both sides – really deserve to be there.”
Bulldogs, who also went through last season undefeated, will be favourites for the premiership, but the students have steadily improved over the last month.
Playing the preliminary final at Forbes’ Spooner Oval, CSU showed the benefit of two tough elimination games.
“After sneaking home and City and sneaking home against ’Roos, all that hard work helped give us a runaway win after those close ones,” Danelon said.
“It was good to have a bit of a turnaround with a good score after two nail-biters.
“This time everything came together in the end for the boys, which will give them a bit more confidence heading into the grand final.”
With their season on the line, Danelon’s squad certainly came ready to play. While full of enthusiasm, the students still made smart decisions.
The students took the option to kick for penalty goals when the chance arose – Daniel Donato’s boot contributing 13 points to the final tally – while they stood firm in defence.
“Our points were shared in both halves, it was not like a points blitz or anything like that. We scored steady points throughout the game, it was a controlled, mature sort of game and that is what I was looking for from the guys,” Danelon said.
“They did threaten, but we pride ourselves on defence and hitting in numbers of two. That basically flustered the Mudgee boys into errors, which we were able to capitalise on with more possession.
“The pressure from our defence won us the game.
“I would really like to put praise on our inside centre and vice captain Joseph Gold, his defence put so much pressure on their attack.
“That spurred on the boys and energised everybody in defence, he just lifted the whole team.”
Danelon felt his side could have won by a greater margin, but also paid tribute to the effort the Wombats mustered.
Missing two of their better players, Mudgee toiled in defence and held out a number of attacking drives from CSU.
“We scored two tries, but to be fair and honest, we should have scored more,” Danelon said.
“You have to give credit to the Mudgee defence, with the amount of possession we had we should have scored more points, but with their scrambled defence they held us out.
“They tried pretty hard, but I was really pleased with the way the boys played.”
The colts match will be the first match on grand final day, Danelon’s side hoping to upset the Bulldogs when the game kicks off at 10.30am.