Tallon Smith

The Hay Magpies have fallen to an 0-3 record in Group 20 First Grade after going down 38-18 to the Griffith Black and Whites at EW Moore Oval on Sunday.

The 20-point away defeat ended a tough day for the Magpies, with losses in reserve grade and league tag seeing the club leave Griffith empty-handed despite valiant efforts from all three sides.

The Black and Whites opened the scoring through William Charles in the 11th minute following some good work in the lead-up from Pasifika Vulaono, before doubling their advantage to 12-0 three minutes later when centre Judd Stevenson crossed out wide.

Hay hit back through hooker Sulio Loka soon after to close the gap to 12-6, but the Griffith side cancelled that out and went further in front when Charles and Stevenson completed their doubles for a 22-6 half time lead.

Needing to be next to score, the Magpies did just that, with Zane Gash exposing some poor goal line defence from the Black and Whites to close the gap to 22-12, only for Griffith to again strike twice and extend their lead to 32-12.

Loka again hit back for Hay with 12 minutes remaining to complete his double and give the Magpies a fighting chance at 32-18 following the conversion from Patty Miller, who was a perfect three from three with the boot.

However, despite being reduced to 12 men after Stevenson was sin-binned for dissent, the Black and Whites had the final say in the match, with Kelvin Simpson putting the icing on the cake for a 38-18 victory.

Magpies coach Zac O’Neill said that while the result was another tough one for the side, further injuries last week and during Sunday’s match, in addition to the continued unavailability of Jock Crighton and Ben Taylor, proved a major disruption to the club’s line-up.

“We were down on numbers, we had three out from last weekend, Rex [Rokosusu], Johnny Weymouth and Lloyz Schulz, which made it difficult,” he said.

“In the first 10 minutes Orisi came off with a bit of a sore knee [and] I had to go on, [so] we had a scrambled line-up for most of the game, I think we had blokes out of position.

“The score doesn’t really reflect the game too much, but we’ll go back to the drawing board, keep working hard and we’ll get there.”

With three of sixteen games completed, the Magpies are starting to feel the pressure, with banking the side’s first points for the year becoming all the more important with every passing week.

Although he acknowledged the side’s start to the year has been slow, O’Neill emphasised that there is no sense of panic within the squad, with the side still adjusting to a number of changes to last year’s grand final line-up.

“[I’m] a little bit concerned, but we’ve got a good group of blokes that are all buying in at training and knowing that it’ll come,” he said.

“We’ll hopefully gel together this weekend a little bit better and stick to our structured sets and complete some sets.

“Completions were probably about the 60 percent mark, which is up again [and] getting close to where you need to be.

“[We need to] probably take it up to about 75 percent I think, that’s where we need to get to and then after that we only can build off it.

“We completed about 17 or 18 sets this week, which is up on nine from the week before, so that’s a positive, but we just didn’t capitalise on the back of it.”

The biggest source of pride for the coach last week, the Magpies again proved fairly strong in their middle defence, aside from a soft second try to Charles created by some pedestrian work on the goal line, with the majority of the Black and Whites’ points coming out wide.

O’Neill said that while it wasn’t quite as good as in the Yenda match, Hay’s defensive effort was again gallant, with the weight of possession ultimately being responsible for the side conceding seven tries.

“The defence went backwards a little bit, but they only scored through the middle of us twice, the rest of it was all on the wing or on the edges,” he said. 

“They didn’t really have a field day through the centre, our defence was pretty good.

“We just ran out of puff, we just did too much defence and they had a full bench and rotated them around well and we were down to three on the bench for the whole game.”

Next up for Hay is a home showdown against an improved West Wyalong side, coming off the back of a 42-16 loss to Yanco-Wamoon following their previous 52-16 upset win over Darlington Point-Coleambally.

Heading into what is looming as a must-win clash for the Magpies’ finals hopes, O’Neill said the focus is again on the simple elements of the game, with the potential for a night game being created by a power outage scheduled for Sunday.

“[The goal is to] just complete highly and get to our kicks, and back our defence and work hard this week at training and we’ll get off the back of that,” he said.

“I think the power comes back on at 2 o’clock, so there’s no juniors, I think there will be league tag, I’m not sure about tackle, and then reserve grade and first grade, so I’d say we will be playing under lights.

“We don’t mind a bit of under lights football.”

The first grade result capped a tough day at the office for the Magpies, with the club’s reserves also falling to the Black and Whites 32-16.

A double to Mathew Smith and a try to Jack Miller accounted for Hay’s three tries, with the Griffith side scoring six to secure the 16-point victory.

Meanwhile, in the opening match of the day, the Magpies went down 16-12 to the Black and Whites in a close league tag clash.

The Black and Whites ran in four tries to Hay’s two, with Jessie Carter and Karly Fisher crossing for the Magpies.

There was no women’s tackle match played, with Black and Whites not fielding a side in that competition.