Coach praises match-winning fullback

RUGBY UNION: No one person can win a game of football on their own but Downlands First XV coach Garrick Morgan believes his team captain Mac Grealy is a special talent he has rarely seen before.

Morgan delivered the highest praise for Grealy following the fullback’s stunning performance in yesterday’s O’Callaghan Cup clash.

Grealy capped a brilliant game to break the hearts of Toowoomba Grammar School players and supporters with two scintillating tries in the dying stages of the match to secure the cup win for Downlands after a five-year wait.

“I haven’t seen a player like him for a long time, and as you have seen today, he can win a game,” said Morgan who played 24 Tests for the Wallabies on the international stage and is a current QRU vicepresident.

“He’s got better and better as a captain and is a very intelligent young man.

“I believe he’s one of the better players I’ve ever seen.

“He’s got great charisma — he’s the full deal.

“I think in the beginning he always tried to win the game by himself.

“But he’s using the rest of the team now and has become a great team player.

“That’s all we have to do — get that right with him and he’ll be a true professional in the future I’m sure.”

Morgan said Downlands’ performance to wrest the cup back from a Grammar team that has dominated the annual clash for five years was built on the back of belief, hard work and desire.

“I think it’s belief,” Morgan said

“The boys believe in hard work and we’ve been working very hard for the last two or three years.

“This goes back four years when I came back into the school.

“We’ve got it back on track at what I believe is a high level and we can continue to perform better and better I believe.

“It (the game) was a heart stopper. I thought we’d won it, then I thought we’d lost, the we won it in the end.

“So if that’s how it’s meant to be done, I’ll just take it.

“It was unreal. The whole squad contributed.

“This is a squad thing. We haven’t had great depth at the school for years and it’s all about depth.

“We’ve been training as a group of about 50 boys for a long time now and they all performed well in the 16s and the Seconds.

“We didn’t have one injury coming in to today. They’re a really fit side. They went out there and stuck it to them.

“We knew it was going to be a hard game and we came up trumps.

“It means everything to the school.”