Burradoo Polocrosse at the Harden Carnival

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We had an open team, two pool players and two subbies head to Harden over the weekend. With some reasonable rain received at their grounds in the days before, the Friday night and even Saturday morning, it was only decided after the first round played and the fields deemed safe enough, if the weekend would proceed. Whilst the fields were very tough going and boggy, they held up ok, there were no accidents and teams had to adapt to wet weather playing with there being very few successful bounces and the ball hard to dig out of holes.

Our subbies of Bailey and Charlie played in different sections which meant they had a good chance to learn about playing with people they might not know. As usual, there was a lot of fun to be held, well done boys!

Zoe and Maggie played in a B open team with Laurie Beer, Katie Peck, Hayley DeBritt and Hannah Stewart. Their first game against Harden they won in extra time, then they played Yass 1 and lost in extra time. On Sunday morning they played Jugiong 2 and lost. Both girls played well and had a good experience playing with different people. Well done!

The Open team of Tom, Sally, Mat, Daniel, Jake and Belinda ended up in A/A reserve, meeting the hot Jugiong team first up. Jugiong defeated them well and went on to be the A grade winners. The second game was against Sydney, resulting in a win which put them in a cross-over semi-final to determine who would go into A grade and A Reserve finals. Here they met Albury and after some strong play from the first section of Tom, Sally and Mat, who certainly made the Albury team aware they were there and although the team tried hard, they ended up going down 12-9. This put them into the A Reserve final against Lake George. After a good tussle, they ended up going down. Congratulations team on getting better each game and your result. Well done to Belinda on winning Best and Fairest in A Reserve.

Harden is to be commended on how well they handled the quickly escalating COVID-19 situation which meant there were a few small team changes for others, and running a good carnival, particularly with their fantastic new pavilion where they were able to have the bar, canteen and Saturday night dinner.

You may have seen that the PAA have decided to postpone the Australian junior and intermediate squads playing at Narrabri and Sydney carnivals, which is a blow for Zoe, however hopefully she will get another chance soon.

We wait to see what happens with the future carnivals thanks to COVID throwing a spanner in the works, with Sydney already postponing their carnival.

If Narrabri goes ahead, good luck to Riley, Maggie and Zoe who are playing in junior teams there and Michael putting his name into the pool.

Courtesy of Burradoo Polocrosse Club