GB Armed Forces suffer narrow defeat in Queensland

Great Britain Armed Forces were beaten by Queensland Combined University at Albert Bishop Park, Nundah, on Friday, in the opening game of their Australian tour.

Coach Damien Clayton felt that the game was a useful exercise, though the frequent substitutions made it hard for his players to find any real flow.

“You cannot have a low completion rate and win a match. We did not respect possession, so when we did have the ball, we did not punish them enough, which conversely put pressure on us,” he said.

“We were penalised heavily and it must have been getting frustrating for them. I made a lot of changes, so it was difficult to steady the ship, as I was constantly looking at next week.

“Were we a better team than them? Probably. Should we have put the game to bed, probably. You cannot tackle all day, when you are on the back end of a penalty count like that, you are going to concede tries.

“They are delighted to have beaten us, so to lose by this score with the completion rate, well it is what it is.

“I have one player who made 37 tackles and only played 60 minutes, so I can see many stood up.

“We need to keep disciplined, we are military people, but with 20 minutes to go we began to push the ball, which is not right. So we move on and build towards next week, which is our main focus and always was.”

GB Armed Forces:

1 Cpl James Hutchinson (capt), 2 Cpl Simon Wray, 3 Cpl Dave Hankinson, 4 Logs Siliv Buinimasi, 5 Cpl Mike Harrison, 6 AB Ryan Matthews, 7 Sgt Garry Dunn, 8 SAC Josh Scott, 9 CPO Kev Botwood, 10 Capt Tom Howey, 11 LAET Ben Taylor, 12 SAC Jordan Andrade, 13 Csgt Jordan Kerman

Interchange: 14 SAC Lee Davies, 15 LAET Mark Robinson, 16 AET Tommy Wilkinson, 17 Sapper Vuli Veikune, 18 Cpl Lee Queeley, 19 SAC Liam Bradley, 20 MNE Tom Loxam

Queensland Combined University:

1  Alex Nicholson, 2  Itaro Matsuo, 3  Linton Enoch, 4  Luchie Boustead, 5  Kyle Riley, 6  Jesse Domil (c), 7  Casey Bromlow, 8  Andrew Taukald, 9  John Dore, 10 Taniela Ilingana, 11 Ben Goulding, 12 Alex Wharton, 13 Dwayne Urquhart

Interchange: 14 Jack Thomas, 15 Jack Iosta, 16 Tyrone Girle, 17 Hayden Yusia, 18 Sam liana, 19 James Fuli

Queensland Combined University 22 (Tries: Yusia 2, Riley, Enoch, Matsuo; Goal: Dumil),
GB Armed Forces 18 (Tries: Robinson, Buinimasi, Harrison; Goals: Wray 3)