Injury cleared in St Mary’s defeat
The run of St Mary’s College in the NRL Schoolboy Cup has come to an end. The Confraternity Shield winners were defeated 34-16 by Keebra Park SHS in the quarter final stages at Kougari Oval on Tuesday evening. While the result wasn’t what they were hoping for, the school received positive news yesterday regarding the health of centre Ollie Moy. Moy was knocked out momentarily after an attempted tackle in the dying stages of the contest, with both sides agreeing to end the match prematurely. “He suffered a pretty bad head knock but has come good,” St Mary’s coach Rob Anderson said. “Ollie was asleep for close to a minute. He has shown usual signs of concussion. It was a pretty heavy knock, but he’s okay and the doctors have cleared him.
“He’ll now have a few days rest to recover.”
St Mary’s came in as underdogs against the rugby league powerhouse and last year’s national champions, but were able to withstand the early storm.
They found Keebra Park buried deep in their half throughout the opening stages, before they conceded a pair of tries.
“We did start pretty well. In our first few sets we didn’t have much footy,” Anderson said.
“We were defending okay but then got a bit of pressure on us. With their first couple of tries we lost our defensive structure.
“Normally when that situation arises where they score the first two tries we want to get out and put a bit of pressure on, but we lost our shape and structure at different times of the game.”
Queensland Schoolboy Jake Simpkin was able to power his way over from dummy half, taking St Mary’s to a 16-6 halftime deficit.
The second half started out with Keebra Park maintaining their momentum as they skipped out to a 34-6 lead, before St Mary’s held their nerve to pick up two consolation tries.
“It was pleasing they stayed in the contest,” Anderson said.
“When our trainer went out, he said the talk was good. They were disappointed with what was happening but wanted to try and fix it. They didn’t drop their heads.
“Making the state quarter finals and being in the game is still a good achievement.”