Clarence Town Cobras travelled to Gloucester onSaturday to take on the Stroud Raiders in what promised to be a passionate clash between the two local sides that last played each other in a fiery 2010 grand final encounter.
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Both communities have been through tough times recently but Stroud have suffered significantly as their home ground, buildings were ruined and looks like being unavailable for the entire season.
Even the most loyal Clarro rugby league supporter would like to wish the Raiders team and township well during their recovery process.
The Cobras seemed to have the upper hand in the early exchanges and with Bradley, Hinton and Gorman dominating the middle they steamed their way up the field for backrower Steve Boyton to run a perfect line on the edge of the ruck to score and give the Cobras a 4-0 lead.
At the halfway mark in the first half Hinton made a powerful burst to the blindside to deliver a beautiful ball to Johnson who raced through a yawning gap to score and stretch the Cobras lead to 8-0 after the conversion again being unsuccessful.
It was at this stage Cobras player Buddi Whaleboat suffered a serious ankle injury whilst taking the ball up close to the Stroud line. The game was held up for approximately half an hour whilst paramedics relieved the situation.
When the game restarted it was the Raiders who seemed to quickly gain the upper hand. Within minutes they had registered their first try when Travis Tilse ran through several would be Cobra defenders to score. The Cobras lead now reduced to 8-4.
The surge was short lived as Clarro regained possession and again it was Hinton who offloaded a clever ball whilst surrounded by defenders to fullback Lewis Keating who did a tremendous job to back up and score next to the posts.
The conversion brought up a 14-4 scoreline advantage which the Cobras took to the halftime break.
Clarro started the second half where they left off when with just three minutes gone Gorman made a powerful 15 metre run brushing defenders aside to score a great solo try. The conversion stretched the Cobras lead to 20-4.
An error and a couple of silly penalties enabled Stroud back into the game and again it was Tilse who did the damage.
His was the first of three quick tries and by the 16th minute mark in the second half the Raiders had stormed to the lead for the first time in the match at 22-20.
But the Raiders surrendered possession from the restart and it was Hinton that picked up the spoils. Running off a dummy half pass he was simply too powerful for the Raiders and charged through the defense to slam the ball down over the line and regain the lead for the Cobras at 26-22.
Once again the combination of lost possession and a penalty saw Stroud deep into Cobra territory and again it was the determination of Raiders lock forward Tilse that did the damage as he continued his fine game with a hat-trick of tries to tie the game up at 26 all.
With the game in the balance it was the brilliance of Clarro’s five eighth Ben Trappel that broke the deadlock when he sliced through the defence to put the Cobras back in front with eight minutes remaining and from the restart Clarro poured on the pressure and positioned themselves beautifully for Melville to slot over a clever field goal to increase the lead to 33-26 with just over four minutes till fulltime.
In what can only be explained as an amazing finish to the game Stroud regained possession from a short kick off, made their way down field and scored to bring them within one point of Clarro with a 33-32 scoreline.
From the resumption they burst through several feeble attempts at tackle by the Cobras and scored a match winning try just seconds from the siren. The final score was 38-33 in favour of Stroud.
Clarro have found themselves in almost identical situations in their last two games what should have been match winning leads with only a few minutes remaining.
This time instead of escaping with a fortunate draw, they paid the ultimate price for not playing for 80 minutes and were on the end of an extremely frustrating defeat.
The final diagnosis of our good mate Buddi Whaleboat was a dislocated ankle with three breaks that has been indicated will be operated on towards the end of this week when the swelling goes down. Good luck for a full and speedy recovery mate, from all of us.
This weekend Cobras will be at home to the Paterson Blues at 2pm on Sunday.
Best forward Ben Bradley, best back Ben Trappel, supporters award Andrew Bashford, best benchy Rob Elliott and players’ player Ben Bradley
Best and fairest points: Ben Bradley 3, Ben Trappel 2 and Callan Gorman 1.
