Collingwood builder Shawn Begg knows all about woodwork and reckons people started coming out of it when his local rugby club wanted to field a senior side again this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a lot of phone calls and messaging, we got quite a bit of a roll-on. The first task was to actually assemble a team and some players required a bit of convincing,\u201d says the Collingwood player and co-coach.<\/p>\n
Several farmers managed to juggle their milking and football commitments to enable the team to come back this season, 138 years after the club was formed.<\/p>\n
The ages ranged from 52-year-old Gareth Scott to 16-year-old Aaron Lockwood.<\/p>\n
The reformed side made a triumphant return, beating Marist 15-14 in its opening match at the Collingwood Recreation Ground, and followed that with a 21-all draw with Waimea.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have had massive community support. It is pretty cool when you come off the field after a game and it\u2019s like the whole community is clapping you off,\u201d says Shawn, who hadn\u2019t intended to play this season.<\/p>\n
But the 40-year-old came off the bench to become a starter at halfback last month.<\/p>\n
The side won five of its nine round robin matches, including the derby against Takaka 24-5, and earned a home quarter-final against Marist.<\/p>\n
It was close, but Collingwood snaffled the ball from an overthrown Marist lineout throw and No.8 Adam Johnson scored his second try to snatch a 28-24 win.Ironically, Shawn used to coach the Marist Div 1 side before moving to Golden Bay three years ago.<\/p>\n
That meant a trip over the Takaka Hill to face Waimea at a cold and wet Jubilee Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought those conditions would suit our country-style of rugby, keeping it simple,\u201d declared Shawn before the semi-final.<\/p>\n
He and hooker Brett McKay scored tries but Waimea was too strong and won 29-12, bringing Collingwood\u2019s comeback season to an end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Collingwood builder Shawn Begg knows all about woodwork and reckons people started coming out of it when his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-804736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}