Ghosts and Rebels in top two spots

the effort of anyone. Everyone dug deep for each other.”

Stevens was also critical of his team’s attacking plays.

“We were clunky with our shape in attack,” he said. “When we had the ball we didn’t go through with the right processes.

“Too many times we wanted to score off every play rather than keep building pressure on them.”

He paid tribute to veteran fve-eighth Hugh Stanley, who score the team’s only try of the frst half.

“Even when we were behind Hughie kept everyone on track,” he said. “He’s defnitely been one of our most consistent players all season.”

Level at 6-6 at half time, the Roosters skipped out to a 16-6 lead with 20 minutes to go and the Rebels were looking at the rare prospect of consecutive home defeats.

“Then with about 10 to go Keaton Stutt got the win for us.”

Bizarrely in the excitement no-one had noticed young Rebels centre Jye Boehme had collapsed on the feld about 20m from where Stutt had scored.

“Jye went down just before Keaton scored, but everyone was following the play and didn’t see what had happened.

“We went back for the kick off and didn’t notice anything until some pointed to him lying on the ground.”

Play was halted with about nine minutes left and the referee called the game off with about three minutes to go, invoking the controversial no extra time for injury rule. It took an ambulance more than 40 minutes to arrive at the ground to take Boehme to hospital.

Either way Stevens said it was a sad thing for the young player and big problem for the Rebels, depending on how long he was out.

He said second rower Nick McGrady could ft in there, but much would depend on the seriousness of the injury.

The Rebels are home next week to Bellingen, second from the bottom of the ladder.

But Stevens said the Rebels needed to be wary of the Magpies who upset Woolgoolga 28-24 on Sunday to crawl off the bottom of the table.

“They’re not a team to take lightly,” Stevens said. “They’ve actually been competitive in most of their games and have knocked off a couple of teams.

“We won’t be taking them lightly.”

Scores

BY TIM HOWARD

The Grafton Ghosts and South Grafton Rebels have secured the top two spots on the Group 2 Rugby League table with wins over top four rivals in Sunday’s home games.

At Frank McGuren Field the Ghosts won an arm wrestle 14-10 against Macksville after trailing 4-2 at half time.

Second half tries to fve-eighth Rhys Hambly and try scoring ace Dylan Collett pulled the home team to the top of the table.

But it was a far from convincing performance with poor ball security, especially coming out from their own half, piling a lot of pressure back on them.

Both teams defended stoically in the frst half and it looked like the score at half-time could be the lone penalty goal by Ghosts fullback Cooper Woods.

But Sea Eagles centre Brodie Bartlett had other ideas and when a Ghosts attacking raid broke down about 15m out from his line, he snapped up the loose ball and sprinted the length of the feld to score.

Bartlett scored again in the second half, but that effort was cancelled out by the Ghosts two tries and conversions from Woods in the second half.

Scores

Grafton Ghosts 14: Tries Rhys Hambly, Dylan Collett. Goals Cooper Woods 2 conv. 1 pen.

Def

Macksville Sea Eagles: 10: Tries Brodie Bartlett

2. Goal Andrew Blair. At McKIttrick Park, South Grafton, a hip injury to boom centre Jye Boehme caused the game to be shortened by eight minutes with the home team leading Nambucca Roosters 18-16.

It was a game that tested the Rebels resolve as they looked down for the count when the Roosters stretched out for a 16-6 lead well into the second half.

Rebels skipper Grant Stevens bemoaned his team’s lack of discipline in the frst half.

“We’ve got to be better than that,” he said. “We gave too many cheap penalties and we turned over too much ball coming out of our end. But I couldn’t fault

“We started to turn it around with 20 to go and started to get some good ball,” Stevens said.

“We got a repeat set and scored a try off the back of that to get us to 16-12.

Stevens said Boehme was complaining of pain in his leg which was twitching when trying to move it.

He said the injury seem to be in the hip area, but there were conficting thoughts whether it was a dislocation or a nerve injury.

South Grafton 18: Tries Hugh Stanley, Keiron Johnson-Heron, Keaton Stutt. Goals Nick McGrady 3. Def

Nambucca 16: Tries Tyreece Sines, Dane Saunders, Logan Jones. Goals Tyrone RobertsDavis 2.