Cottesloe premier grade rounded out a great day for the club by defeating the 2017 Champions West Scarborough on their own turf. The Ressies, Thirsty Thirds and Fours For Life laid west to the men in maroon and the premier grade put the icing on the cake by winning 16 points to 10. The conditions were fairly inclement and Cottesloe won the toss and elected to play with the wind. Charl Nieuwenhuis employed a lot of territorial kicking in this early period and Cottesloe enjoyed a significant territorial advantage for most of the first forty. Wests were proving difficult to break down in defence though and it forced Kieran Stringer to point his finger to the posts on several occasions. West’s scored a try against the run of play during this period due to a barnstorming run by their rotund number eight but Cottesloe still finished the half 9 points to 5 on front.

There was a palpable feeling among the West’s supporters at half time that there was a fifteen point breeze behind them for the second half and they would kick on and win, but just as with Nedlands the previous week it just didn’t materialise for them. Cottesloe really turned the screw at scrum time and piggy-backed up the field off West’s ill-discipline. With 15 minutes remaining, after a period of sustained pressure in the West’s 22, Charl smashed his way over from close range and scored the resulting conversion to go 16-5 ahead. In fairness to Wests they did not buckle. They laid siege to Cottesloe in the last fifteen minutes even going over for a well worked try in the right corner with 8 minutes to go, but the conversion proved impossible and they never really threatened again.

Cottesloe have now consolidated their position in the top 4 with this victory and are proving very hard to beat. There is an intangible belief in defence that makes it very difficult to break this side down and even the best teams are faltering. There were a number of huge displays from the team. Tobias Hoskins cemented his place on the Western Force touring squad to Mauritius with yet another bruising performance and Rikki Bentham took the souls of yet another handful of highly rated props at scrum time, but for this writer we have to go with Charl for man of the match. He scored all of Cottesloe’s points, was deft with has handling and monstrous with his kicking. He never shirked his defensive duties and proved how robust he is with ball in hand on multiple occasions, all while still playing out of position at number 10. Cottesloe travel to Joondalup this weekend full of confidence and after defeating West Scarborough and Nedlands in successive weeks, surely now fear no side.