N AT I O N A L O L E A G U E Championships eliminating her from contention. Julian Dent kept his hopes alive through there, but needed to win the Australian Long Championships, and didn’t. In the Junior competition, Ryan Smyth also put on a late charge, winning the last four rounds to give himself a chance. He was, however, coming from a fair way back, and Simon Uppill wrapped the title up when he was second to Smyth in his only start of the carnival, the Australian Long Championships. Kellie Whitfield did not put together the strings of victories that the other individual winners did, but she was consistent enough to wrap up the title with a race in hand, despite only winning twice in a season where there were eight separate race winners. Vanessa Round, who won four events out of five in WA, might have got closer had she run more than six rounds.
Cockatoos run away with National League
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HE Canberra Cockatoos ran away with the 2006 National League, giving them their third win in a row and their twelfth in 13 years. In contrast to 2005, when they took a thin women’s team into the season’s final week and were almost caught by the end, in 2006 they were the only state able to consistently field a full and strong team through the Australian Championships carnival, in which they achieved the maximum possible 140 points, and they finished with a record winning margin of 88 points.
Blair Trewin
Queensland Cyclones win Junior National League
The main issue which was resolved in the final week was the destiny of second place. The Victorian Nuggets started the week 10 points behind the NSW Ultimax Stingers, but were never able to make any real inroads. They might have had a chance had they beaten NSW in both Relays, but whilst the women did the necessary in difficult circumstances, the men never looked like getting close. South Australia’s Southern Arrows climbed to fourth after a solid week. The Queensland Cyclones took their first title when they were comfortable winners of the Junior division. They were helped by having two rounds at home against thin fields, but their depth, the product of a strong junior program, meant that they would have won even without that home-ground advantage. The ACT Cockatoos edged out Victoria’s Nuggets for second. Dave Shepherd and Grace Elson took out the senior individual titles, as expected at the start of the week, but both had to withstand strong challenges. In a remarkable coincidence, both competitions featured challengers who had been injured for most of the season, were only going to run the minimum eight rounds (and therefore couldn’t put a foot wrong), and who swept all before them in the early races in WA. Jo Allison was the first to falter, her fifth place at the Australian Sprint
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T the recent Australian Championships Carnival in WA the young Queensland Cyclones won their first ever JNOL Trophy. This was not a chance event and the Queenslanders hope that it’s the forerunner of many more trophies. In 2005, as we savoured the success of the Queensland Schools team, we watched the presentation of the JNOL trophy to WA with some envy. Following on from this event the Cyclones Coach (Geoff Peck) and the Manager (Terry Cavanagh) determined to put great effort into taking out the JNOL trophy in 2006. One strategy was to put in an application for a NOL event, which given previous seasons almost seemed to guarantee success at the junior level. What we did not realise was that the Queensland NOL event would become a major world ranking event, with high senior and junior participation, and that the other states would increase their participation levels in junior events throughout the season.
Kellie Whitfield, Grace Elson, Dave Shepherd and Simon Uppill, NOL winners for 2006. 10 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2006
