Rugby League Coaching Manuals

The Newtown Jets NSW Cup squad travelled to the western shores of picturesque Lake Macquarie on Saturday for their final trial match for 2009.  The Jets played the Toronto-based Macquarie Scorpions for the Brian “Chicka” Moore Shield, so named for the Newtown international centre who played and coached both clubs during his distinguished career in Rugby League.

The Jets won the match 44-28 but left coach Greg Matterson with a plethora of selection problems in terms of the team’s indifferent form going into round one of the NSW Cup premiership competition next weekend.

Newtown led 32-4 early in the second half but their performance fell away badly from that point onwards. Macquarie outscored the Jets 24-12 in the last thirty minutes and showed up some glaring shortfalls in the NSW Cup club’s armoury.

Big front rower Stanley Waqa was Newtown’s best forward while former Easts Rugby Union centre Alfred Paea made a strong bid for team selection next weekend.

In what was the biggest upset of the 2009 SG Ball season the Central Coast Storm, winless and badly beaten in all of their previous starts, ran out 22-8 winners over the hitherto unbeaten Newtown Jets at Henson Park on Saturday.

The young Jets had obviously believed all of their own publicity and turned in their worst display of the season, trailing 16-4 at halftime and conceding too many penalties and turning over too much possession to ever look like retrieving the result.

The Jets compounded their problems by missing several scoring opportunities at critical stages that might have swung the result around. In the early match at Henson Park, the Roosters Junior League Harold Matthews team made it two wins in a row in beating the Central Coast Storm by 28-20.

The Newtown SG Ball Cup team travels to Wollongong on Saturday (March 14th) to play the Illawarra Steelers at WIN Stadium, with this fifth round match due to start at 1.30pm. In the NSW Cup, Newtown begins its 2009 campaign travelling further down the South Coast to take on St George-Illawarra’s partnership club the Shellharbour Dragons at the Ron Costello Oval, Shellharbour on Sunday (15th March) at 3.00pm.