A Travis Brooke led Maitland Blacks put the Singleton Bulls to the sword in an awesome display of attacking, running rugby at Marcellin Park on Saturday.
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Maitland ran in seven tries and was awarded a penalty try as well in their 46-17 win against a much-improved Singleton outfit.
In an ominous warning to the rest of the Newcastle and Hunter Rugby Union competition the outcome could have been more comprehensive had it not been for handling errors.
But unlike previous weeks when Maitland had allowed the momentum to swing from errors, they muscled up in defence and won the ball back to launch another attack.
Maitland’s scrum led the way winning twice against the feed, being awarded a penalty and continually putting the Bulls on the back foot and scrambling to clear the ball.
“It’s a much improved result for us,” Blacks co-coach Ryan McCormack said.
“The front-row stood up today. In the scrum our front-row gave us a really good platform and in the line-outs Travis was back in the mix.
“It was a really good forward pack today who laid the platform to score some tries and big Travis was hard to tackle.
“He is so respected, he won the players and coaches awards and got the referees’ votes.
“It’s great to see him back.”
In a fitting tribute to the 20th reunion of Maitlands’s 1998 first, second and third grade premierships, the Blacks won in all three grades.
“It’s always good to get wins on milestone days like that. It meant a lot to the boys to perform well in front of the 1998 premierships members.”
McCormack was equally as pleased with the side’s defence as their attack.
“We set a few goals as a team for today and one of them was line-speed. Credit ot the guys they did exactly what they said they were going to do,” he said.
“It is one thing to have line-speed and another thing to make tackles and they were doing that today.
“It was nice to finish with a nice flurry of tries in the last 10-15 minutes. The 60 minutes prior to it led to that last period.
“Singleton ran out of gas in the end and we were able to capitalise on it.
“It was a good tough hit out, Singleton is a much improved side on last year.
“The boys love to throw the footy around, but it’s about earning the right to do it and that’s where we are at now.
“We need to know when, but that will come.
“We play a great brand of football when we are going forward, it’s when we’ve been in the tough stuff that we’ve struggled.
“But today we got in the grind there are points and managed to work our way out of it. “We need to build to next week against Uni and onwards for the season. We need to do it against everyone. We can’t afford to have low weeks.”
The Blacks had winners across the field, with Dan Runchel having a fine game at hooker, Pat Batey and Max Stafford creative in the halves, stand-in-skipper James Johnston maintaining his 100 per cent winning record with another strong game and front-rowers Willy Soe and Turi Uini powerful.
Fans got a glimpse of Maitland’s full attacking power with co-captain Chris Logan coming on in the final 20 minutes, after meeting representative duties, and tearing through the Singleton defence with electrifying running.
As any good wing should Rob Williamson scored a double running in support of Logan, who had people guessing at who he was wearing headgear and the unfamiliar No.22.
The Blacks coaching staff will have some pleasant headaches going forward with Josh McCormack solid at fullback and co-captain Michael Howell to return from injury and Nick Davidson and James Robinson in second grade.
