Day one of the 2012 New South Wales Junior State Cup was an exciting day for one affiliate in particular, with Coolamon Touch Association (CTA) sending teams to the event for the first time.
Coolamon brought two teams - a 10’s Boys and a 12’s Boys - to the event, and after plenty of hard work in the lead up, CTA President, Brendan Flanagan, is excited to see it all come to fruition.
“It’s been good, it’s been worthwhile. My initial idea was to get one team here, but we’ve ended up with two teams, and Temora Touch and Coolamon Touch have combined, we’ve given them a couple of players in one of the teams that they were short and they’ve given us a player or two for our teams, so that’s something we’d like to work on in the future,” Flanagan said.
“There was not a lot of sleep from our kids on Friday night, they eventually settled down and I think they’ll sleep well tonight, they were very excited today.”
CTA has around 400 registered players at its affiliate, a great number for a town with a population of approximately just 3000 people and Flanagan says that it is hoped through its teams travelling to Junior State Cup, they’ll be able to lift the standard of their competition.
“The most satisfying part is seeing the kids that you’ve seen every week playing in our comps, firstly the improvement just from the training for Junior State Cup and then to see them take another step today and you can’t help but improve in the atmosphere of the carnival against better opposition.”
“They’re learning as they go, that’s the satisfying thing, seeing the improvement they’ve made straight away and now they know that they can draw on that that will have a benefit on our comps.”
CTA recently received funding as part of Touch Football Australia’s Targeted Growth Program, with the money allocated helping the affiliate have the resources to get to the Junior State Cup.
“They helped us to run a level one coaching course which gave us coaches for this and a level one refereeing course which gave us referees for this event so that was money well spent by Touch Football Australia. We’ve got two teams here and we’re not winning obviously, we didn’t expect to but we’re not getting flogged either.”
It’s been a busy weekend for Flanagan, who has also been refereeing at the event but he says it has all been worthwhile to see the teams take to the field and enjoy playing Touch Football.
“I’m the sort of person who likes to give back to the community a bit so that’s satisfying, I’ve got four kids, the two older ones play and I enjoy getting involved in their sport and watching them.”
