ARE Oberon Tigers the real deal in 2024?
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While it's still early days, but the Tigers produced an impressive performance on Saturday, April 8, as they thumped CSU Mungoes in the Woodbridge Cup season opener 46-10.
At times, Oberon's football was scintillating but coach Dallas Booth - who returned to the helm of the coach in the off-season - said he's not getting too far ahead of himself.
"We played really well in patches but there's still definitely some things we need to work on," he said.
"That's to be expected. We missed out on a trial game and we had a lot of guys miss out on the 10s, so it was sort of our first hit-out for most of us.
"I was pretty pleased with the outcome, but we've definitely got some things to work on."
The game was lucky to go ahead at all, after Charles Sturt University closed all its fields on Saturday because of heavy rain.
Thanks to both clubs coming together, Oberon was able to host the game at short notice.
"Full credit to CSU and Woodbridge, they got on to us the night before and said that their field may not be available at CSU," Booth said.
"We were lucky enough that we didn't have as much rain in Oberon than in Bathurst, so our field was alright.
"We were able to get the lines sorted pretty quick, so we could still have a game.
Booth paid credit to new recruit Jack Sullivan, who bagged himself a double on debut, while Blake Fitzpatrick - who was playing at halfback - was a threat as usual, scoring two tries and booting seven conversions.
He also said the forward pack really "stood up" too.
But at times, Booth believed his team's ego got the best of them.
"We got a roll on and scored a couple of quick tries and then I think we left our ego get to us," he said.
"We went away from completing our sets. We'd try and offload on the second tackle and drop it or do something silly.
"But it's only round one. But there's definitely more positives than anything else."
In the league tag, Oberon were comprehensive winners again, shutting out CSU 14-0.
