2003 Season - Irsh Find Leprechaun Gold

Irish find Leprecaun Gold against the Cougars

In the first official hit-out of season 2003, the Cougars once again faced off against the Irish in the now traditional St.Patrick’s Day clash. Thankfully the snow held off this year as a huge Cougar Team turnout showed up for the clash, with 25-30 blokes turning up to make the 13 man team. Even more surprising was the humungous crowd of supporters that had gathered. Local estimates varied and placed the number on somewhere between 25-30,000, while others adopted a more conservative number of 70-100 odd people.

Despite being desperately keen to use any advantage to redeem their loss from last year, the Irishman were kind enough to allow a few modification’s to the rules to make the game more even.

Big Tommy offered a few early pointers to those new to the game, with his all important advice that a goal above the posts was worth “one pint” and a goal below was worth “3 pints”. So with a keen thirst, the boys headed onto the field with nothing but low goals on their mind.

The game started off with a flurry with both teams struggling to handle the slippery conditions. Cougars goaltender and 2002 B&F Tony Cooper was inspirational throughout and repelled many early attacks from the Irishman. Across the Centreline, Chris Freeman, Mugsy and Marcus were dominant early and continual thrust the ball forward. On the forward line, Cougars self proclaimed “goal sneak” Jase Stratford was showing some early season form and snagged and over and an under, whilst Super Coach Grills came on late in the first half to bang a couple of 3-pointers. His late goals allowing the half to end with the Cougars holding a narrow lead 3-4 to 3-2.

Would the Irishman be defeated again by the plucky young Aussies? Unfortunately, the answer to that would be no. The Irishman made the most of their superior skills for this form of game and linked up magnificently in the second half to score a number of under goals that proved a bit too much for the Cougars. Everyone managed to get a great run though as the Irish timekeeper (clearly having drunk too many Guinness’s) turned the second 30-minute half into an hour long marathon.

The final score was something like 23-35.

A solid hit-out for the Cougars and a good tester for the season to come.

Super Coach Grills was optimistic with the outcome saying look we had a lot of new guys in the team today and quite frankly, I like what I saw. Mugsy and Marcus in the centre, Jason and Brian out of the backline, Ads and Chris, big Brendan, I could go on and on…but their were too many new guys and quite frankly, I’m still trying to learn everyone’s name. There was also some great performance’s from our regulars – Coop’s was fantastic, Freemo showed a lot of grit, and Jase, Timmy, Col, and Blocky all looked solid, and let’s not forget myself – those goals were pretty special weren’t they…. I tell you what, it’s going to make team selection this year very tough indeed. It’s going to get to the stage where regular’s who miss a game (…say Edmunds for example), may not be able to get their spot back for the next game. From a coach’s position, quite frankly I’m in early season heaven…