Brisbane Premier Grade final

[beige]

So, one day after trekking to Suncorp Stadium with 50 224 other people to witness the annual Dragons choke, I took my place on The Hill at the disappointingly quiet Ballymore Park for the Brisbane Premier Grade final between Souths and Brothers.

The reports that Quade Cooper would make the dash from Wellington to take his place in the Souths line-up turned out to be true and he proved his worth almost immediately by scoring an astonishing individual try after collecting a Brothers up-an-under. The conversion made the score 7-3.

However, Brothers scored two tries before half time, and one try and a penalty after half time, to make the score 23-7. As the match ticked over in to the final quarter Souths scored two tries to close the gap to 4 points and suddenly had all the momentum. Despite this, Brothers managed to resist the sustained Souths pressure and eventually managed to slot a penalty in the final minutes to take the score to 26-19.

Unfortunately, this is where things got ugly over to the right of me on the hill when humorous by-play between opposing groups of supporters erupted in to a mass fist-fight (started when a drunk lower-grade Souths player punched a Brothers supporter in the face).

However all of this couldn't distract the players on the field and Brothers took a well deserved victory.

Eastern Stand


McLean Stand


The Hill


F***ing brawl


Full time

[travelling_gerry]

good on the Brethren

[jargan83]

Massive crowd in the Heartland

[normie]

Nice one, beige. Weather looked great.

[mudskipper]

well done Bros....

[The Man]

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/s...003411,00.html

[GIGS20]

YOU might think Ballymore looks like a shack TOCC. But I'd take it!

I assume the MES upgrade will match it!

[normie]

I'm with you gigs! Beats the whatsit out of anything west of the rabbit proof fence!

[TOCC]

i tend to think that the QRU screwed up the planning for the final series, on saturday they had the lower grade teams playing(3rd & 4th grade and colts 1&2) and on sunday they had the higher grades playing (women, premier colts, 1st grade, 2nd grade, and premier grade).

There are only 2 fields out there, so having 9 games in one day is a bit much but by seperating them over two days they probably minimised the overall crowd that they could have had, many of the people who sat out there on saturday watching games werent real keen on returning for the sunday games.

Hopefully the 3rd playing field is built by this time next year and all the teams can play on the one day.


In regards to Ballymore, i wrote a comment about 2 weeks ago saying how Ballymore was in a better condition then i remembered, whilst some things are ragged(scoreboard in 3rd photo) the overall condition of the stadium is still quite good. To properly host games S14 games again things like the corporate boxes need to be fixed up, i doubt corporate sponsors are going to be willing to pay the same cash they pay at suncorp as they would for the facilities at ballymore.

[TOCC]

Quade Cooper after making a early flight back to Brisbane after the Wellington Test

[YOUTUBE]5KEGIvxxRxU[/YOUTUBE]

[beige]

That was a brilliant try (even if my I incorrectly remembered it as an up-and-under). Even though he was in a losing team he was a class above at times.

[tic]

A good try but he should have passed - if one of those tacklers had been more committed he may have looked like a goose.

---------- Post added at 22:53 ---------- Previous post was at 22:49 ----------

i tend to think that the QRU screwed up the planning for the final series, on saturday they had the lower grade teams playing(3rd & 4th grade and colts 1&2) and on sunday they had the higher grades playing (women, premier colts, 1st grade, 2nd grade, and premier grade).

There are only 2 fields out there, so having 9 games in one day is a bit much but by seperating them over two days they probably minimised the overall crowd that they could have had, many of the people who sat out there on saturday watching games werent real keen on returning for the sunday games.

Hopefully the 3rd playing field is built by this time next year and all the teams can play on the one day.


In regards to Ballymore, i wrote a comment about 2 weeks ago saying how Ballymore was in a better condition then i remembered, whilst some things are ragged(scoreboard in 3rd photo) the overall condition of the stadium is still quite good. To properly host games S14 games again things like the corporate boxes need to be fixed up, i doubt corporate sponsors are going to be willing to pay the same cash they pay at suncorp as they would for the facilities at ballymore.

I agree - that grand final deserved 15000 people. There were games played by GPS during the year that pulled bigger crowds than that Ballymore crowd.

[beige]

A good try but he should have passed - if one of those tacklers had been more committed he may have looked like a goose.

Meh - I disagree

I was hoping there would at least be a five-figure crowd there so that was disappointing.

[AndyS]

A nice try, but I can only hope that the video is distorted - Cooper is a relatively scrawny piece of work but looked big compared to that lot. Seriously, most of those guys are built like they are straight out of school. And you say that was the winning side that was defending?

So that is the level that gets premier funding and forms the foundation for all professional rugby in Australia? I wonder how they would do up against a Guinness Premiership team....

[beige]

Discussed this with Jargs online earlier - after being in Queensland for a few weeks I'm really looking forward to the Super Rugby season expansion in 2011 (or more accurately when it kicks in proper in 2012). Despite the huge Broncos saturation in both the media and daily conversation last week, the Bledisloe test ensured that rugby was still getting talked about. This week and next week - absolutely nothing. Will be nice when the Tri-Nations / Four-Nations kicks on in to the beginning of October so that rugby's not just forgotten every year.