Illawarra Mercury
Story by: Mitch Jennings
May 11 2019
If the lopsided scoreline wasn’t enough, marquee recruit George Tyson suffered a season-ending knee injury, while fullback Tom Garrido suffered a sickening broken leg that saw the game called nine minutes early.
Back-rower Seb Blackett also left the park early with a shin injury while star centre Ed Ansell is already sidelined after suffering a broken fibular against Dapto last week.
It’s a bitter pill for coach Sean Maloney after overseeing a promising 2-0 start to the season, with Thirroul counterpart Jarrod Costello offering his sympathy.
“It’s really unfortunate for Corrimal with a couple of injuries and a bad one there at the end,” Costello said.
“Hopefully it’s not too bad we obviously wish [Garrido] the best and a full recovery.”
The Butchers showed little sympathy on the paddock, leading 30-0 at the break after running in five first half tries in faultless first 40 minutes.
They went on with it in the second, adding four more before the match was called to an early halt.
“It was a good start from us, we played really fast and really direct in the first 40 which is what we wanted,” Costello said.
“Corrimal have been playing really well so we wanted to start fast and start clean, no errors, no penalties, and get into the grind early on. It was much better than round one.
“We completed most of our sets and we didn’t make stuff up on the run, we used our genuine shape to create our chances, stuck to what we do and got through our sets.
“We’ve got Dapto next week and then Helensburgh the following week so we string a few together and try get a bit of momentum.
“It’s hard when you have a bye [in round two] after one game. We didn’t play that well in round one either so it would’ve been nice to go straight into a game so hopefully we can get a few on the trot now.”
Jack Noble opened the scoring for the Butchers two minutes into the match and the rest of the points came in a flood, with Blake Higgins, Hayden Crosland, Wade Dargan and Cooper Purcell all getting across before halftime.
Crosland had his second seven minutes into the second stanza, while Jake Walker, Tom Simpson and Damian Sironen also got across as the lead ballooned to 50-0.
The Cougars found some consolation with tries to Wiremu Peters and Jake Eccelston before Garrido’s injury capped a horror afternoon for the hosts who will need to regroup ahead of their road clash with Helensburgh next week.
In Saturday’s other fixtures Collegians beat Dapto 26-8 at home, while Wests defeated Berkeley 40-4 at Berkeley Sports Ground.
