For Scott Blanch, leading the Greater Northern Tigers men onto Farrer's John Simpson Oval on Saturday was a bit of a full circle moment.
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Thirteen years before he had done the same, only then it was the Farrer 1st XIII.
Saturday was the first time he'd played a game at the ground since he led the school to a University Shield and his talents then took him to Manly-Warringah and later Limoux Grizzlies in France, although the facility now-a-day is very different to what he remembers.
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"It's a high class ground here now," he remarked.
And while it was as he put it: "a long time ago now", Blanch still holds a lot of fond memories of playing in the green and gold there and said it was "fun to get back out there".
The Tigers couldn't have asked for a better start, a neat cut out pass finding Reece Jaeger, who set up winger Isaah Millgate for a dash for the line before he passed back inside for Jaeger to dive over.
But the Rams hit back with a vengeance.
After leading 10-4 at the break, they ran in three quick tries to extend their advantage to 24 points midway through the second half and all but extinguish the Tigers championship hopes.
Blanch thought the Tigers' effort was good.
"Our effort was there definitely, our illdiscipline just probably overshadowed that," he said.
They also "had to do a lot of tackling".
"You never win footy games doing that much defence," he said.
It was his first campaign with the Tigers for a few years with the Country Championships in recent years being played as under-23s.
Reverting back to opens for this year, Blanch said it was nice to be involved again although he would have liked to have seen a Greater Northern Championships and then a side selected from that.
"It was a bit of a throw together thing," he said.
"It would have been good to actually go into a country champs with a Greater Northern Championships and then pick a side and go into it."
"But I guess every division was the same." "But it's good to get back playing Northern Division in that open age, and coming together with the 16s and 18s and women it was a good day of footy."
His attention now turns to the Bears and their quest for a seventh successive first grade premiership. It will be a different-looking side to the one he captained-coached to the title in 2019 after the departure of Kieran Fisher, Shane Wadwell, Richard Clegg. Josh Schmiedel and Andrew Moodie among others.
"We've got a young side there," he said.
"We've lost a bit of experience but I think that youth and enthusiasm is going to serve us well."
Things will become a bit clearer this weekend when they host Terrigal in a trial.
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