The Yanco-Wamoon Hawks have pipped the Griffith Black and Whites in a match filled with controversy at EW Moore on Saturday.
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Both teams had tries disallowed in the Hawks 8-6 win in the Paul Kelly Memorial Shield final.
In the eighth minute, Yanco-Wamoon looked to be first on the board when Jordan Davis stripped the ball from a Griffith player – as the Black and Whites were working out from their own 10 metre line – and crashed over.
However, two players were deemed to be in the tackle when the strip was made and the try was disallowed.
The next controversial moment came as the first-half was coming to an end.
The Black and Whites were awarded a penalty attacking Yanco-Wamoon’s line with 30 seconds on the clock.
Griffith went through the motions before the buzzer went as a Black and Whites player was tackled.
However, referee Mark Culla didn’t hear the siren and play continued.
Stephen Broome put in a cross-field kick and Kodie Charles flew through the air, collected the ball and planted it on the ground – much to the disbelief of the Yanco-Wamoon players.
Culla conferred with his touch judges and the try was disallowed – as half-time should have been called before the final play – and the score remained 0-0.
After Griffith knocked on from the kick-off of the second half, the Hawks capitalised.
Steve Matthews got his arms free close to the line and offloaded to winger Jesse Fitzhenry who opened the scoring.
Yanco-Wamoon were then on the attack again when Glenn Dumbrell sliced through before sending Hayden Brooks charging up the field.
Brooks was tackled before he could get across the try-line but the Hawks sent it wide for Jordan Davies to score.
The play also resulted in Griffith’s Stephen Broome being sent to the sin bin as Yanco-Wamoon went up 8-0.
Being reduced to 12 men spurred on the Black and Whites.
Following back-to-back penalties, Griffith co-coach Andrew Lavaka scooted from dummy-half to score with seven minutes remaining to make the score 8-6.
A desperate Griffith outfit weren’t able to get over again as the Hawks upped their defensive efforts to ground out the win.
Yanco-Wamoon co-coach Glenn Dumbrell was elated following the win but wanted to make sure his side continued its pre-season form.
“We’ve built a little bit of momentum for ourselves but we’ve got three weeks until the season actually starts for us with a first round bye,” Dumbrell said.
“We’ll take a lot of confidence out of this but we really need to back it up when it counts.” The Group 20 season starts on April 16.