Many highlights for Storm

ONE of the highlights of the past couple of weeks is the great form of Storm under 12’s Michael Sandona.

Sandona looks a great prospect, following up his hat-trick against Mudgee the week before with another five star effort.

The under 11’s also put in a superb effort beating Bloomfield in their best showing of the season with Dylan Miles adding to his already impressive list of tries with another four.

Another notable highlight was the form of Storm under 15s who knocked over the previously undefeated Bloomfield.

Results were:

The Storm troopers were at home for a double header against Wang and Blackheath.

Roman Peters and Nathan Ralph led the way with outstanding games, Seth Reid continued his great support play while Cody Buck scored the try of the year following a barnstorming run.

Lachlan Reilly continues to improve and was a real handful for the Wang defence.

Game two was against the Blackcats with Eli Morris leading from the front with a great captain’s game.

Tyler Buck and Tyraan Sheehan made some great inroads into the Blackcat defence.

Blake Goldspink also rates a special mention for again crossing the stripe several times to add to his wonderful tryscoring tally.

UNDER 10

Storm played at home and after being beaten the week before against Blayney they bounced back to record a very good win against St Pats White 42-12.

Try scorers for storm were Ben Merrick (2), Will Brown, Hayden Taylor, Lachlan Large, Luke Brown, Kory Pringle and Tully Kirsten one each.

Tully Kirsten took out three points for the player of the match following his non stop display.

Lachlan Large and Will Brown also scored points in the awards while Ben Orford had a great defensive game.

UNDER 11

The Pirtek Hoses Storm took on Orange Bloomfield who were sitting one point above them on the competition ladder.

In their best performance this season Storm won the game 46-18.

The much bigger Bloomfield forwards were a handful for the Storm but Mackenzie Atkins, Kevin Large, Riley Walsh and Thomas Fraser took them on and got over the top of them in the end.

Storm’s backline, led by Pacey Stockton and Lachlan Jones, was too quick and skilful for the bigger Bloomfield players scoring some excellent tries from set plays.

The highlight of the game was a four try effort by Storm centre Dylan Miles taking his tally to 21 tries for the season.

Other try scorers were Ethan Pringle (2), Lachlan Jones, Mackenzie Atkins, and Brandon Davies.

Hayden Wren and Riley Gillespie were solid in defence.

UNDER 12

The Henrys Earthmoving sponsored Lithgow Storm travelled to Bathurst to play Panthers.

The Storm boys never got out of first gear in the opening 20 minutes and found themselves down 14-0 at the break.

However the boys came home strongly in the second half to score three quality tries to ultimately go down 14-12 against a spirited Panthers team.

Storms’ first try went to hard working prop Ben Murray who was unstoppable from 20 metres out, dragging defenders over the line with him.

Michael Sandona showed his class beating several defenders to race 80 metres down field for Storm’s second try.

The boys had no luck with the boot, missing all three attempts at goal which cost them dearly.

Max Nursey scored the third try after a great chase on a kick 10 metres out from the Panthers line.

Forwards Paul Siniwaski and Tom Morris made plenty of metres with each charge and defended well.

Riley Shanahan and Matt Handley were good off the bench and Tyson Griffiths and Zac Stanford tried hard all match.

The second row pairing of Jess Menzies and Mark Price impressed the coach with their defensive efforts at critical times during the match.

Michael Sandona followed up his three try effort last week against Mudgee by making a team high 15 tackles and 12 quality hit ups.

UNDER 13

The Lean and Bennett Storm played the undefeated Bloomfield Tigers.

The boys have been training hard and putting plenty of effort in over the holiday period and after having a month off were ready to go.

The Bloomfield Tigers have been unstoppable so far this year and have prided themselves on an attacking defence.

The Storm are the only side to score more 20 points over them in their last meeting scoring.

The boys have been working on playing a more flatter style of offence for this game and using decoy runners and better line running.

It paid off and the boys had Bloomfield holding off in defence.

Matt Ringin led by example with the forwards charging into the line.

Jarrod McNair, Ayden Howland and Dean Field were troubling the defence with hard running and gaining good metres.

Byron Wilson and Mitchell Large led the charge in defence with Byron Wilson hitting hard in every tackle.

The game went back and forth and was played in a terrific, fast-paced style of footy.

Bloomfield opened up the scoring leading 6-0.

Shortly after big Dean Field smashed through the defence and scored out wide and the boys trailed 6-4.

The boys were running into a strong wind and Bloomfield took control of field position and possession scoring two late tries to lead at the break 16-4.

In the second half Bloomfield came out strongly and scored straight of the kick off, but the boys stood tall finding themselves trailing 22-4.

Matt Ringin got his forwards going and Michael Brooks started controlling play with his backs.

Ayden Howland played a great captain’s game and led hard with big charges into the line.

The boys were playing great footy and came back to trail 26-20 just before full time.

Brent Battersby played his usual great game as did Ben Allen making some great try saving tackles and big kick returns.

In the end the boys fell short after pressuring the Bloomfield tryline for sometime and Bloomfield raced away to score a late try taking the game 30-20.

The boys played extremely well and came out and won the second half 16-14, which is something really special.

The Storm defence had a few lapses but the attack was outstanding and caused Bloomfield to change their defence.

They will take a lot from this game as they now prepare to charge at the finals.

Try scores were Ayden Howland (2), Ben Allen and Dean Field and Michel Brooks 2 goals.

UNDER 14

The Storm took on Bloomfield and never let them in the match with strong defence right from the kick off setting up the win.

All the Storm boys played well with their bench getting a good work out.

Jarrod McPhail was too strong in attack for Bloomfield, coming up with three tries.

He was supported well by Toby Kenniff who ran well for two tries of his own.

Riley Allen led the way in the forwards with Jackson Bostock having a strong match as did front row debutante Daniel Coleman who showed he will be putting pressure on the forwards for a starting spot.

Try scores were Jarrod McPhail (3), Toby Kenniff (2) and Josh Kitchener, Connor Legge, Dylan Dukes, Cameron Denley, Riley Allen, Nicholas Miller and Daniel Coleman.

The Storms players’ players were Jarrod McPhail and Riley Allen.

UNDER 15

The King’s Engineering Storm inflicted competition leaders’ Bloomfield first defeat of the season with a hard fought 16-14 win despite losing three players to the sin bin.

Lithgow scored first when the Bloomfield markers were too slow, Chad Osland planting the ball from dummy half for a 4-0 lead.

The home side went further ahead when Wayde Egan threw a well timed pass to Cody Godden who crossed out wide to take Lithgow to an 8-0 lead.

Bloomfield replied with a try of their own to see the half time score at 8-4 to the Storm.

Wayde Egan opened the scoring in the second half with a good try in which he took on and beat the defence with a good step to see Lithgow leading by 12-4.

An incident midway through the second half saw two Storm players sent to the sin bin and Bloomfield took advantage to post two tries and lead by 14-12.

The Storm continued to stick to their game plan however and soon found themselves in good position.

Nathan McAndrew chipped the ball into the Tiger’s in goal and Cameron Denley was able to pounce on the loose ball for an exciting try, giving the Storm victory 16-14.

There were a number of good performances from the Storm players with the points going to Darcy Allan (3), Trent Lane (2) and Mitchell Case (1).

Darcy Allan also took out the players’ player award.

There were some good efforts in defence by Jye Gillespie and Jye Marlowe with good support coming from Wayde Egan, Cody Godden and Nathan McAndrew.