THE Waratah Tigers have beaten cross town rivals Griffith Black and Whites 38-26 at EW Moore Oval yesterday.
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The Waratahs led the whole match thanks to a Kose Lelei triple, but Black and Whites were never out of it.
Early in the match Black and Whites received a massive blow when they lost captain-coach David Milne through injury.
The first 10 minutes was a fiery affair that was filled with penalties and mistakes by both sides.
The deadlock was broken in the 13th minute when captain-coach Kose Lelei made a break from a scrum before offloading to centre Shorne Ngu who ran away to score.
Shortly after the Waratahs were in again through winger Viliami Ngu who took a cross-field kick and beat the cover defence to cross the line.
Black and Whites bounced back when David Vasilaa muscled his way over the line off a penalty tap taken 20 metres out.
Two quick tries to Moahoni and Kose Lelei just before half time blew the score out to 22-6 heading into the break.
Griffith Black and Whites hit back early in the second half when Vasilaa ran a good line to score his second try untouched.
With 20 minutes to go a high shot from the Waratahs led to a push and shove between teams that resulted in Maohoni Lelei getting sin-binned for 10 minutes.
Two tries during this time to Black and Whites got them back in the game and a try with three minutes to go had them within six points.
A late break by Gospel Toru gave the home side a chance to snatch a draw but Waratahs managed to hold them out and score a try of their own through Lepa Kupu to put the result beyond doubt.
Winning captain-coach Kose Lelei was happy with the win but believed his team needed better ball control.
“When we complete our sets and get to our kicks is when we went well, but when we try and offload it and do stupid stuff in our own half we lost the ball too much,” Lelei said.
“We needed to play in their half but we kept getting stuck in our own half. We got to hold the ball, we gave the ball away too much in our own half.”
Lelei praised his whole team for their efforts and said the forwards laid a good platform for their backs.
“Once we were going forward it let our backs come in and scoot and make some good yards,” he said.
Both Griffith teams face tough opposition next week with Waratah Tigers facing second-placed Tullibigeal Lakes United and Black and Whites doing battle with top of the table West Wyalong.