The Sunshine Coast Rugby community came out in force on Saturday to Stockland Stadium to support the Stingrays as they took on Wests. With the match marked in the diary from the start of the year as a good match up for the Stingrays plenty of supporters took advantage of Ferguson Cannon Lawyers generous offer at shouting entry for the public to come down and see the Sunshine Coast boys in action. Unfortunately the Stingrays did not take advantage of the home ground support to fall eventual losers 40-25.
As has been common for the Stingrays this year they competed very well in patches however laspes in concentration saw them punished.
To the Stingrays credit they held in until the very end drawing within 5 points when centre Simon Laing crossed in the corner to take the score to 3-25 with 10 minutes to play.
Wests scored again and kicked a penalty to close the match out and send the Stingrays to another loss.
Compounding things for the Sunshine Coast was the loss of Dylan Fahey to a suspected broken leg. Fahey will join a very long list of injured players in the casualty ward at SCRU headquarters. Coach John Rangihuna was impressed with the players stepping up from the Wartung Premiership to fill the spots.
“James Zhao from University went good at tighthead prop. He stepped up for us today.
“We really can’t take a trick with injuries at the moment but the positive is that we are giving these local competition players a chance to step up and experience the next level of rugby.”
RESULT
WESTS 40
(Brad Cameron, Kirk Hawkins, Devyn Smith, Rob Rutledge tries; Benfield Lainchbury 6 pens, con)
SUNSHINE COAST 25
(Simon Laing 2, Kurt Ludeke tries, Alex Millington 2 pens, 2 cons)
