Having progressed through the Regional finals and the Greater Sydney finals undefeated, there was a great deal of excitement and optimism about our Newington boys’ chances at the state finals.

Playing at the home of the Sydney Swans on a picture perfect day was a rare opportunity that these boys would be able to treasure forever and the way they played did justice to such an occasion. Eight teams travelled from all over the state to compete for the title of Champion School in NSW. Newington were positioned in a pool of 4 teams from the Sydney Swans Academy catchment area and the other 4 teams were in a pool consisting of schools located in the GWS Giants academy catchment area.

Newington commenced their campaign with strong wins in their pool matches against St Therese CPS, Yamba PS and Dudley PS. This meant they finished on top in their pool and claimed the title of NSW’s best AFL school in the Swans catchment area across the state. Stirling Smith provided a strong target up forward while Harry Earwaker, James McGregor and Nick Tucker were clever around goals proving a headache for the opposition defence. In the midfield Reuben Palmer and Louis Bertram’s tap work in the ruck gave our smaller midfielders first chance to drive the ball into our forward line. Bililign Robertson, James Andrews and Oliver Townsend worked tirelessly around the ground. Our unsung heroes in defence repelled opposition attacks time and again by playing in front and getting to the ball first. William King, Jack Earwaker and Will Douglas proved adept at reading the play to fill this role perfectly. Owen Douglas, Ali Saab and Liam Carriline played with great courage and regularly won the ball for Newington when it was in dispute.

Prior to this year’s State Finals, teams from the Riverina and Wagga area had dominated the Paul Kelly Cup. Newington have been one of the few Sydney based schools to match and compete with these schools. In the semi-final Newington were matched up against Trinity Anglican from Albury. Experienced observers around the ground identified the winner of this match to be the likely State Champions. This proved to be the case. Newington started well scoring the first goal for the match.

Trinity then replied with a brace of goals to set up a match winning lead before Newington stemmed the flow and started chipping away at the lead. Late in the last quarter Newington had an opportunity to kick within 1 point of the lead. Unfortunately the kick didn’t hit its target and the subsequent rebound resulted in a goal to Trinity. In this modified form of the game, quarters are shorter than normal and Newington ran out of time to regain the lead. As anticipated, Trinity progressed to win the Grand Final comfortably.

While disappointed not to progress to the Grand Final, our boys did themselves proud. For this group of young men from a variety of sporting backgrounds, it was a memorable occasion and a tremendous learning experience.

Neil Brunton
Sportsmaster – Wyvern House