AT LAST

Coast sport’s longest losing streak finally ends after 980 days

“THIS is the confidence booster that we all needed, not just for A-grade but for the club itself.”

That was the reaction of Ormeau Shearers coach Julius Kuresa after his side broke arguably the longest Gold Coast losing streak in recent history.

There were emotional scenes as the full-time siren sounded at Bilambil yesterday afternoon, sealing Ormeau’s 31-22 victory.

The club’s Rugby League Gold Coast A-grade team had not won a single game since July 24, 2016, when they beat Runaway Bay – exactly 980 days earlier.

The Round 3 match was Ormeau’s second-last chance to stop that figure rising into four digits and came after they had conceded 40 or more points in both of their opening two fixtures.

Bilambil meanwhile were coming off a 22-16 away win over Southport.

“I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit emotional,” Kuresa said.

“It’s been a couple of years of hard work and not seeing results but today was really good.

“We made it hard on ourselves but we won and the guys showed a bit of grit. I’m over the moon.”

Having shifted Grayson Te Kiri to hooker and deployed a new halves pairing of Tye Barry and Josh Phillips, the Shearers started brilliantly to open up a 16-0 lead but were made to work from there.

“Bilambil as always, they never gave up. They got pretty close to us and we had to grind it out in the end,” Kuresa said, admitting that nerves set in the closer that elusive victory came to fruition.

“With 20 minutes to go the game was still in the balance, even though we were ahead.

“It wasn’t until three minutes to go that I thought we finally have got it. There’s a lot of relief.”

Despite their shoddy start to the season, Kuresa revealed he had remained convinced that a breakthrough wasn’t far away.

“I had confidence,” he said. “There was a little bit of feeling there that it was a repeat of last year … we weren’t playing to the roster that we had and there was a lot of soul searching for myself as coach as well: How do we as the coaching staff get these guys up?

“We have a lot of experience in this team and that certainly came through today.”

The Shearers play Southport next Sunday for a shot at back-to-back wins.