Coogee R & R Carnival

On last Saturday, Coogee kicked off the 2022/2023 R&R season with a carnival on our home beach. Numbers where strong, particularly for in the youth, but just having a carnival earlier in the season not just to get the new/updated teams a run through this also gave us the chance not just to get new officials accredited for Coogee but also others from clubs across our and Sydney Northern Beaches branch. We started this process last season and Coogee has been able to get accredited 11 new officials in this time, most but not all in the R&R area. I’d like to thank long time club member and Sydney Branch officials co-ordinator Peter Carney for helping make this possible.

The National R&R panel is also in the process of determining what iteration of the rules, who much of the COVID rules will be in play, will be used so a lot of variations where in play across all the clubs represented on the day.
 
In terms of the carnival Coogee had strong representation in the u11 to u17 age groups with majority of our open competitors unavailable due to work requirements. That being said our youth came out of the gates strong, particularly our u15 and u17 5 person teams who were running new combinations from last season. Our u13 to u15 2 person teams where also able to get 2 run throughs, which normally doesn’t happen, and at the same time we were off the beach by 10:30am where many of the area jumped into Patrol 9 so that they could get their skills maintenance completed thanks to Emma Askham and Tony Waller (and Paul Haes with the radio).
 
This event wouldn’t have been possible without all the helpers and officials but I’d like to shout out to the IRB crew of Josh Ricamara and Alex Scott, who were both down at the beach at 5:30am helping set up the water area including laying the club’s new string of cans.
 
Feedback we received from Sydney Branch’s Director of Junior Development was 
"Twas a great day, plenty of competitors and officials, new and experienced… ratios the envy of the nation! Special thanks to the organisers Andrew Bloxsom and his Coogee crew, and Gordon McKirdy. We’ll done! We’re looking forward to coming back to Coogee in February"
Dave.

All in all it was a great day and proof again that Coogee can run a nice R&R carnival and thanks to Randwick Council for allowing us the space.
A Bloxsom