The Gosford Kariong Open grade rugby league team kicked off their preseason campaign with an encouraging away performance against the seasoned Berkeley Vale Panthers side in excessively hot and humid conditions.
The Storm announced themselves as a potential surprise packet in this season’s competition after a spirited contest fi nished up at one try a piece. Given the 1.15pm kick off and the players early season level of fi tness, the game’s duration was sensibly reduced to a sweat fi lled brace of twenty minute halves in the unrelenting heat.
Following on from a scoreless opening period, the Panthers struck fi rst when they crossed just after the break via an unspectacular, yet effective burrowing effort from close range. This was countered shortly thereafter when gifted Storm half, Kurt Burrell, managed to skip outside his defender, before scurrying a handful of metres to spear over in front of the modestly patronised car park. Powerful Gosford skipper, Max Russell, had earlier combined with Burrell and club president Josh King, to threaten Berkeley Vale on the right edge, however a dose of preseason rustiness saw the last pass go array as one or two promising raids unravelled.
The Storm’s tremendous commitment in defence will have pleased Gosford coach, Mr Ed Johnson, as the men in purple look forward to the opening round of this season’s competition, which will be played against 2015 semifi nalists, The Entrance Tigers at Duffy’s Road, Terrigal on Sunday, April 3, kicking off at 11.30am. In the most recent round of junior trial games, the scheduled Narara Valley High School fi xtures, which were to have been played against Ourimbah and Asquith, were moved across to the Ourimbah Rugby Park at the eleventh hour owing to the spongy state of the scho ol oval. A hastily reconfi gured program provided a keen, pre-Easter hit out in drizzly conditions for half a dozen of the Storm’s teams.
Media release, Mar 21, 2016 Andrew Stark, Gosford Kariong Rugby League Club