By Tallon Smith

The Thirroul Butchers have stunned the local rugby league community by taking out the Illawarra Rugby League Premiership with a 24-18 win over two-time defending champions Collegians in the Grand Final at WIN Stadium last Saturday.

After facing the serious prospect of missing the finals altogether just a matter of weeks ago as Dapto made a late charge and threatened their spot, the fourth-placed Butchers made a run through the finals with an upset 18-16 win over Wests before pulling off an even bigger scalp to defeat Minor Premiers De La Salle Caringbah 26-16 in the Preliminary Final.

Brad Deitz opened the scoring for the Butchers, before Collegians hit back through IDRL Best and Fairest Callum Gromek and Zeik Foster to take a 12-6 lead. 

This was followed not long after by Thirroul’s Jarrod Boyle sending Cooper Bowen over to score, before Gromek crossed for his second to see Collegians go into the break up 18-12.

Thirroul emerged from the break with a point to prove, and Deitz dabbled a delicate kick for Monty Raper to cross and level the scores.

Then, with the match in the balance, Boyle, who was named Man of the Match, threw a spectacular pass to put Bowen into space, who grubbered the ball for a flying Jye Patterson to toe it ahead, before collecting the ball and scoring to send the Butcher army on the hill into absolute raptures.

The Butchers then repelled the final surges of the Collegians machine to secure a famous victory after being rank outsiders in the books of almost every footy fan on the Leisure Coast.

Thirroul President Brett Jones said that the premiership victory was “massive” for the club, who have been there and thereabouts in recent seasons.

“It’s massive, we haven’t won a Grand Final in nine years,” he said

“We’ve been successful, we’ve played well in the Presidents Cup, in the COVID year [2020], we won First Division that year, and then we were leading the competition the next year when the COVID wiped the competition out, and then last year we were Minor Premiers and went out in straight sets.

“So I think the nucleus of the squad from the win on the weekend have been together the last four years.”

Despite the amazing end result, the Butchers were at risk of missing the finals as little as five weeks ago, with the club limping into the finals on the back of a 7-8 record before remarkably clicking into gear in the postseason.

“We had a mixed year,” Jones said.

“We had quite a few injuries but we also had a few key players go overseas.”  

“Now that the restrictions have been lifted the young guys who haven’t had the chance to travel, so we had our captain, he went over for about a month, we had two other players that went overseas to Europe.

“But in the end it worked out perfectly because they came back fresh for the end of the year and came home with a wet sail.”

Jones said that this season’s victory was the polar opposite of last year’s finals campaign, where the ladder leading Butchers fell at crunch time.

“It was the opposite to last year, we were Minor Premiers and went out in straight sets,” he said.

“This year we came through the back door and went all the way, it was great,” he said.

Speaking on the health of the game in the Illawarra region, Jones said that whilst the standard is amongst the best regional competitions in the country, there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure the league’s future is stable.

“I think obviously it’s not great having six teams, but the standard of the competition is way up there,” he said.

“I think the standard of footy is very good, but we just need something to level it out, to get more teams into the competition.

“The hard part is there’s no perfect answer to it, it’ll take a lot of work, but I think we’ve got a great following out here, and I think for the Grand Final a lot of new people in town [were there] that we hadn’t seen at a Grand Final before, so it’ll increase the following out this way anyway.”