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Report for the Open Mens

I have been the coach since 2008 and have seen a vast improvement in player attitudes since then, and 1 of these changes was a more serious attitude towards their fitness. The mens team started by firstly asking Josh Cameron to be their personal trainer and after 2 months of fitness training they all felt fitter than they had ever been, and it was evident on the field. Thank you Josh for taking control of the teams fitness it got the desired results, and was handled professionally.

With a new format for the open men this year, we were placed into a pool with 2 top ten seeded teams, Central Coast & Bankstown we lost to Central Coast 4-3, the game was there for us to win but we weren’t good enough on the day, Bankstown were all class and we found it hard to compete against Australian & NSW rep players losing 9-0, our third game we played Liverpool and that was a game we want to forget going down 7-3. After Fridays games we were placed in the plate division of the competition for Saturdays games, playing Varsity and losing 4-1, Wollongong losing 7-2, Hills Hornets was a win for the boys 3-2, our last game against Ryde Eastwood on Sunday morning was a win 10-3 + a field goal, yes a field goal we were in control of this game by this time so Ryde Eastwood decided to shake things up a bit, they thought they should have shot for goal and they did, and it went straight between the posts, the kicker was sin binned but it was a great kick, even the refs laughed.

The players` player for the weekend was our vice captain Ben Robinson, and it was well deserved. Ben made a hard decision half way through the leadup to State Cup to step down from the captaincy and concentrate on his own game and it proved to be the right decision, Troy Nichols took the captaincy role back on and it was a win win for the team overall, thank you Troy.

This team has had a few personal changes from the previous year, firstly a new player who came to our club Brad Griffin, Brad has been the adrenalin this team has needed, and he is a welcomed player, firstly as my assistant coach, to our club and to this team. Brad is also a Level 2 coach and a Level 2 referee and an NTL rep player, so his knowledge has been invaluable. I personally would like to thank him for being my assistant coach and to also be apart of our team. We lost a few players due to work commitments so we needed to look for players to fill these vacancies, and we didn’t need to ask twice, Jeral Milner had been training with the team ever week and was an obvious choice as long as we could convince his brother Beau, we think he was frightened Jeral might take the lime light off him and he did. Jack Stutfield was our next choice, as Jack has been there before and helped the boys out, and as the weekend went on and had a great tournament. Tom McFadden was another player who has played at this level and he never let us down, thank you to those players.

Lyn Krause thank you! thank you! thank you! what a manager, your the best, what else can I say.

Rob Summers felt the wrath of Lynnibil and I don’t think he has come down off the tent walls after Lyn ripped it into him, god I wish I had a video of it. I am sure he wont be making anymore stupid rules that he isn’t going to enforce in future. And we will do it all again next year GO BULLSHARKS!!!!

Men’s 40’s make semi-finals at NSW State Cup 

Ballina Men’s 40’s had a great weekend making the semi-finals of the NSW State Cup. It was only the second time the team had played together. We had a great start with a 3-6 win over Ryde followed by probably our worst game with a 4-2 loss to Kiama. Day two also started well with a 5-4 win over Hornets, but again in our second game of the day we played poorly with a 3-2 loss to Wests. We struggled to contain a stepper name “snapper” in a 6-1 loss to Canterbury, but went on to finish the day with an outstanding 3-3 draw with the top of the ladder team Wallsend, who were undefeated in the round games. The draw was enough to put us in the semi-finals on Sunday with Wallsend who came out hard playing a faster more open game than the day before beating us 6-3. Overall it was an excellent effort considering more than half the team had only played one state cup previously, and half the team is over 45, and a few pushing 50.All are keen to go again, so a Ballina Mens 40’s should be a regular appearance in the future.