The first stanza of the match was a great spectacle. Within the first five minutes James Daley was held up over Crookwell’s line and the resultant scrum saw the ball moved from Ben Patrick to Richard Manion. Manion feigned right and picked up Ryan Kouvelis off his left hip who scored beside the posts.

Then started the longest fifteen minutes of Crookwell’s left side wingers football career. Having fumbled a ball earlier the winger was peppered with kicks from Richard Manions boot which either saw him caught out of position or put under tremendous pressure from Boorowa’s outside backs. With perfectly timed runs, Corey Randell regathered two of the kicks to score giving Boorowa a commanding 21-0 lead after 20 minutes.

Crookwell although trailing were dogged and were able to drive play into Boorowa’s half only to be thwarted by some tenacious defence. With ten minutes before the break Crookwell’s flanker toed through a dropped Boorowa ball to score beside the posts. A penalty shortly after meant the visitors had scored 10 points in five minutes and had announced that they were not about to lie down.

Richard Manion scored on the half time bell after following through on a well placed grubber to regather and to score an unconverted try giving Boorowa a 26-10 lead.

Crookwell made their intentions clear after half time scoring two converted tries in quick time and Boorowa’s dominance of the game was now well and truly in question. Thankfully a hefty reserve bench and some level heads saw Boorowa score four tries in the remaining twenty minutes through Pat Harton, Sam Burton Taylor, Dane Rowley and Matt McGrath. Two of the tries came from rolling mauls following clean line out ball and the others from snappy back line movements.

Boorowa have two games to go in the round before the finals commence. Next weekend the side travels to Taralga and the following week host Jindabyne at home. An interesting statistic is that in the three weeks leading to the finals Boorowa will have consecutively played each of the top 3 other sides in the competition. Watch this space….