St Pat's under 15s go undefeated at Narromine league tag carnival

That in itself was brilliant, but they did it playing up an age division in under 17s made it remarkable.

Certainly coach Mitch Duffy was left both surprised and amazed by what he saw unfold across the four games his Saints played.

They began with an 8-0 win over St John's Dubbo Gold, then went on to beat Forbes Magpies Black 24-0, Canowindra Tigers 8-0, and then the Group 14 representative side 8-0.

There was no goal kicking at the carnival, which meant the Saints scored 12 tries and didn't concede once.

"It was just see how we went at first considering we were playing in an older age group, but once we were a few games in, I set a goal that we held our defence and didn't have any tries scored against us," Duffy said.

"We ended up achieving that, which was pretty good. I was surprised because we haven't done much work on defence at all to be honest.

"There were plenty of times when we were under pressure, when we had a few calls go against us, in two of the games we had three or four consecutive sets on our own line."

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While the core of the side is the same under 15s that Duffy coached to last year's Group 10 Junior Rugby League preliminary final, there were some new faces on Sunday.

The positive sign was that all those new players impressed their coach.

"Some girls have come up from the under 13s from last year, they've obviously aged-out because they are 14 this year, and I was very impressed with all of them just with the way they gelled in," Duffy said.

"Mia [Willott], Jaya [Farrar] and Kiyarah [Cobcroft], they all really impressed me.

"I was really impressed by Liv Collette too, it's her first year with us. She actually came over from Panthers and I was impressed with the way she played, she scored four tries for the day and was very strong in defence as well."

While Duffy knows more work needs to be done before the start of the Group 10 Junior Rugby League season on Sunday, April 30, the Narromine league tag carnival is evidence his young Saints are headed in the right direction.

As under 15s last year they only lost two games in the regular season, with only eventual premiers Bathurst Panthers having a better record in attack and defence.

Duffy hopes to do even better in 2023.

"That [carnival] just goes to show the effort these young girls have put into training as well because we've probably been training for a good month now and 90 percent of it has just been fitness," he said.

"They've handled that fitness really well.

"The season starts at the end of April so it will be interesting to see how it goes ... hopefully we can line up another trial game, if not that will be it until the start of the season.

"There will be some very strong sides in the Group 10 competition, so we'll have to wait and see how we go, hopefully we can step up."

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