2018-M1-05: Cooma v Goulburn

Recap

Down to the wire against Cooma

The Dirty Reds returned home with a rare Cooma double, winning both games at Rotary Oval on Saturday.

In first grade, the Reds won a see-sawing 38-36 nail-biter, while the Dirty Twos recorded a thumping 48-12 win.

Coach Ben Pearson, who’s played and seen two decades of games against the Red Devils, said that even with the errors it was a great result.

“Taking two wins from Cooma, at Cooma, isn’t easy,” Pearson said.

“It’s always one of the hardest places to win and winning in both grades doesn’t happen a lot.

“Yes, we can talk about errors that we made but the result was fantastic.”

And a lot of errors there were for both clubs. The referee was particularly stringent on what he deemed high tackles and both sides had numerous players shown the yellow card (three for Goulburn, four for Cooma).

Goulburn went into the match off the back of a bullocking 67-0 win against Wests but knew Cooma would be a very different proposition.

While Goulburn has a healthy 62% win ratio against the mountain men, that reduces to just 40% at Cooma.

Getting sufficient player numbers to make the long journey is always problematic, but it’s the never say die attitude of the Red Devils on their home patch, regardless of where they sit on the ladder, that is the biggest obstacle.

Goulburn went into the second half trailing 19-7 but quick tries to Mik Webber and Jordan Lees, both converted by Webber, had Goulburn in front by two eight minutes into the second half.

Momentum had shifted and suddenly it looked like Goulburn would run away with match as they put on two more tries to push the lead out to 33-19 with 18 minutes remaining.

But rising to the occasion, the Red Devils lifted themselves. While Goulburn added one more try Cooma added three and had closed the gap to just two points with two minutes remaining.

But the Red Devils weren’t the only tenacious side on the paddock and Goulburn showed plenty of steel to hang for a hard-fought win.

Coach Pearson was especially pleased given that a handful of players had backed up from reserve grade.

“It doesn’t help when a lot of guys have played a fair bit of football before they’ve even run on in first grade,” he said.

“So special credit to those guys.”

Best and fairest players for Goulburn were Josh Guymer (3), Mark Kiamoana (2) and Brad Clements (1) with Mik Webber named Players Player.

FIRST GRADE: Goulburn 38 (Jordan Lees 2, Brad Clements, Jordan Wilcox, Mik Webber, Mark Kiamoano tries, Webber 4 conversions) bt Cooma 36.