Match Report - Arana v Logan Bros - 20/7/01

From our Special Correspondent, Ron Tallon.

Friday night's game was played in rather cool weather with a fair amount of dew on the grass, causing a lot of dropped ball by both sides early in the game.

Logan came out all fired up and peppered Arana's line with very heavy forward play.

Tenacious defence by a committed pack of forwards kept Arana's line intact.

Arana's backline then started to function and good ground gaining runs were the result.

Logan kept coming back but their failure to deliver the last pass when in a scoring position proved their downfall.  Perhaps this was because of the front-on defence or the smothering influence of the aforementioned forwards.  The result of this see-sawing contest was a 16-0 lead to Arana at "oranges".

The highlight of this stanza was the brilliant runaway try by the new boy Rob.

The second half started at a furious pace with a much more determined Logan.  However, that proved to be much the same as the first half with rock solid defence by Arana, either forcing errors, bundling Logan over the sideline or holding them up in goal.

Arana's attack was effective but there was also a great deal of running across field.  Straighten it up boys!  And perhaps a more judicious use of young Tallon's hefty boot.

Two tries resulted from this ploy when a good kick and chase found the Logan in-goal and another one resulted in an error from their full-back.

The referee had a good game, applying the 8-10 metre rule judiciously and only mystified the writer once when Arana picked up a loose ball and scored - clearly from a Logan knock-on.  The ref chose to play the knock-on.

The second half highlight was a run-away try by the tough tackling consistent Al Tallon.

All in all a good result for Arana Hills.