Bryson Luff

The first weekend of the 2025 Christie and Hood Castlereagh League finals saw some great on field action taking place at Narromine on Saturday and then again at Gulgong on Sunday.

Narromine’s Cale Oval was the venue for Saturday’s qualifying semifinals with the opening reserve grade game between the Baradine Magpies and the Binnaway Bombshells setting the tone for the weekend when they put on a entertaining game with the Maggies just getting up 12-10 after the Bombshells got out to an early lead.

Following that the Dunedoo Swannettes and the Narromine Jets engaged in what was a high standard and closely fought game of league tag for the majority of the encounter until the Swannettes powered away in the latter stages to record an impressive 24-8 victory after it was 12 points to 8 in favour of Dunedoo at half time.

As much as the Narromine Jets ran out deserved first grade winners over the Coonabarabran Unicorns they benefited from a number of errors made by the blue and golds throughout the match which certainly did no harm to their cause.

For the opening quarter of the game the Unicorns barely made it over halfway due to their lack of possession and after 17 minutes the home side had racked up 18 unanswered points, six of those coming after an interception of a very adventurous pass by Coonabarabran in one of their rare attacking forays into Narromine territory.

The Unicorns did manage a converted try not long after to make it 18 to 6 and looked to be in again not long after but the final pass of an otherwise impressive backline raid went astray and the chance to reduce the margin was lost.

The visitors’ woes continued when they lost a player to the sin bin for holding down in a tackle with four minutes remaining in the first half with the Jets immediately taking advantage of playing against a team one man down and at half time they lead by 24 to 6.

To their credit the Unicorns came out and “won” the second half 16-10 but the scoreboard damage done in the first half was too much to overcome and they now walk the sudden death tightrope beginning next Saturday when they will host the Gulgong Bull Terriers in the Minor Semi Final.

The Bull Terriers had to fight hard against the Coonamble Bears in the elimination final played at Gulgong on Sunday.

In a game that ebbed and flowed, going from one end to the other, the lead changed twice in the first half before it was locked up at 16 all at half time, and then once again the lead changed twice in the second stanza before the Gulgong side got their nose in front with just 12 minutes remaining and then went on to score two converted tries in those remaining minutes to win the game that could easily have gone either way 32-22.

The earlier games at Gulgong saw the Coonamble get over the top of Coonabarabran in the reserve grade by the tune of 42-24 and Baradine got home against Cobar in the League Tag with a 30-10 win.

The four remaining teams in each grade will be whittled down to three next weekend with the losers of the games being played at Coonabarabran on Saturday ending their 2025 campaigns.

Sunday’s major semifinals at Coolah will feature the only two undefeated teams in the Castlereagh League competitions thus far this season, those being the Coolah Flyers in league tag and the Coolah Kangaroos in first grade.

The big carrot for the winner of the first-grade clash between the ‘Roos and the Narromine Jets is the hosting rights for the 2025 Christie and Hood Castlereagh League Grand Finals.

The first game at both the minor and major semi final venues will kick off at 11.30am with the other grades to follow straight on.