COOL CULLEN: Broulee Dolphin Paul Cullen scored a try and kicked two goals for his side on Saturday.
THE Broulee Dolphins opened up a 20-point gap at the top of the South Coast Rugby Union ladder on Saturday after Batemans Bay’s recent woes continued.
Broulee was forced to work hard but eventually came away with a 29-10 win over Milton at Captain Oldrey Park as the Boars slipped to consecutive defeats, going down 15-12 to Bombala Bluetongues at Delegate.
The Bluetongues took a 12-nil lead into the break and extended that to 15-nil in the 65th minute.
A youthful Boars outfit with no reserves at its disposal gave the comeback a red-hot crack with tries to Andrew Fleming and Ken Stewart inside the last 15 minutes, but fell agonisingly short.
“We had a number of players pull out on the morning of the game,” Boars coach Dave Silversides said.
“We scored a couple of tries towards the end but the clock was against us and the conditions certainly made it difficult to try and open the game up at all.”
Silversides added that the Boars’ latest setback was “certainly disappointing” and he called upon the more experienced members of his squad to step things up a gear from now on.
“Some of our senior players need to commit to the team a little bit more and make themselves more available for training and for games,” he said.
“We’ve got a few young players under 20 years of age and they really rely on the senior players to be available on game day.”
There were no such troubles for the Dolphins on their home turf as they ran in five tries to Milton’s one.
Winger Justin Austin continued his incredible try scoring form with another double, while Terry Lee, Paul Cullen and Michael O’Kelly, also got on the scoreboard.
“It was as we expected because Milton is certainly playing good footy and there was no quarter asked, no quarter given,” Broulee coach Ron Rae said.
“The forwards just got stuck into one another and there was some good, old-fashioned rugby out there.”
Broulee has the bye this weekend, which Rae said has come at a good time, while the Boars will need to dust themselves off against Narooma at Hanging Rock.