Sport
2 August, 2024
Talented athletes
THE Cairns Pirates has become the first local touch football team to compete in the Junior State Cup in Redland Bay in early July and they’re looking to become pioneers in the sport.
The 14 boys from the under-18 Pirates team have become the first touch football team in Cairns to have competed in a Junior State Cup, disputed from July 4-6.
The first timers didn’t leave with the cup, but they achieved their goal of displaying the undisputed talent of the Far North and they are hungry for more firsts.
“Their goal was to show people down south the talent that we have up north,” said Pirates coach Brooke Knight.
“This group has been together for four years since they were under-15s and they came through together. In that time they have travelled to JSC-North championships and so they wanted to go to the next level this year.
“In the end they got two losses, one draw and a win, but they held their own against the best teams in the state, like the Gold Coast. Most importantly they got a lot of experience from that level of game.”
With team members from the Tablelands and Tully, the passion for the game was obvious in their commitment to make it to every training session at the Aeroglen Pirates touch field on Sundays when they were preparing for the state cup.
“A lot of our boys travel a long way to get there (Aeroglen) because they live all around, so they travelled a couple of hours to get to training each week. They made a lot of sacrifices,” Ms Knight said.
“I think the biggest strength of this team is how close they are as a group of friends, and they’re also very athletic, very fast, which made them stand out down south and there’s a lot of untapped talent from our Indigenous players.”
After their result at JSC, the team decided to remain together and move to the next group to compete at the Senior State Cup as under-20s.
“We couldn’t have done this without high-ranking coach Colin Beckitt. He took the boys down to Redland Bay because I couldn’t at the time and he prepared them for the championship, without our manager and coach Jonah Pau and our generous sponsors,” Ms Knight said.
“Because of how well they performed we’re taking them to the Seniors State Cup in November because they want to stay together and keep playing together.
“We’ll start training shortly. They are a special group of kids.”
