Payne Cup/Cowboys Challenge semi-finals live stream: Augies, St Pats, Kirwan, Ignatius Park feature

It’s a Mackay v Townsville grand final showdown after a bruising day of semifinal action. See who has made it through to next Thursday’s decider. Relive the action from all three games.

Kirwan State High School came out on top of a bruising encounter with arch rivals Ignatius Park College 18-4 to reach the Aaron Payne Cup grand final.

Both coaches expected a closer match than their last hitout and that promise was delivered during the brutal arm-wrestle.

The game was an incredibly cagey affair until barnstorming backrower Elijah Tapau-Taylor booked his school a ticket to the final with a second-half double, but Kirwan will be sweating on his availability for next week after he was put on report for a shoulder charge late in the game.

Kirwan fullback Cohen Dittmann and centre Eperama Kikau led the way for the state school in attack and defence, proving to be the difference in a game of inches.

It was Dittmann’s vital try-saving tackle that kept his team ahead in the first half.

Ignatius Park winger Iowani Cavuilati had broken the line and looked certain to score until Dittmann stopped him in his tracks one metre out with a brutal head-on tackle.

Kikau showed an ability to hypnotise the defence with his changes of pace, slowing as he approached the line before jetting through tackles with his dynamic speed and power.

The Fijian centre scored Kirwan’s second try of the first half on the stroke of halftime when his leg-drive was just enough to drag two tacklers across the line to score.

Two uncharacteristic sideline misses from Bears goalkicker Anthony Iorangi meant Kirwan only held a slender 8-0 lead at the break.

The second half was a different story, with Tapau-Taylor opening the scoring early for Kirwan after a trademark run, spinning out of the tackle as he reached the tryline to dot down.

Tapau-Taylor was over for his second try 10 minutes later as the devastating ballrunner looked unstoppable close to the line.

Tempers threatened to boil over late in the game as emotions flared, resulting in a double sin bin to Nicholas Divljak and Kikau following a brouhaha in the middle of the field.

Ignatius Park scored a late consolation try through left winger Cavuilati to get on the scoreboard.

St Patrick’s v St Augustine (Payne Cup)

St Patrick’s College Mackay is the first team through to the Aaron Payne Cup grand final after brilliant performances by Xavier Kerrisk and Jaxon Purdue in a hard-fought 28-16 triumph over St Augustine’s College.

St Patrick’s will now face Kirwan High next Thursday at Queensland Country Bank Stadium before the Cowboys play the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in the NRL.

St Augustine’s were valiant in defeat and remained in the fight for the entirety of the match, making the most of halfback Lachlan Magill’s great kicking game.

St Patrick’s schoolboy stars Kerrisk and Purdue crossed for three first-half tries after a shaky start to the match, conceding before the school’s first possession.

The Mackay college had made a mistake from the kick-off, inviting pressure which was duly converted into points by St Augustine’s winger Connor Boggian when St Pat’s failed to defuse a bomb.

From that point on it was one-way traffic for the Pool A winners with Kerrisk scoring back-to-back tries before Purdue extended the lead in the closing stages of the first half.

Right centre Will Shears was dominant with his carries and led the St Pat’s kick chase in the first half but had a quieter second stanza.

The second half started much like the first, with St Augustine’s finding the line in the opening minutes – this time through Lachlan Salecich in the right corner after another mishandled bomb.

Another failed bomb defusal led to a fifth-tackle scramble and Boggian pulled off an incredible late offload to put his captain Magill into space to score, levelling the score at 16-all.

But a signature 60-metre run from Purdue, skipping through the defence and accelerating away from his chasers, put a stop to the St Augustine’s surge.

Holding onto a narrow four-point lead, St Pat’s five-eighth Bailey Venz was sin binned for holding down his opponent after a linebreak.

St Patrick’s kicked a penalty while a man down to extend its lead before Hunter Harris crashed over to put the game to bed with five minutes to play.

Kirwan v Ignatius Park (Cowboys Challenge)

Ignatius Park College scored early bragging rights over Kirwan High in the Cowboys Challenge with a 28-10 win at Jack Manski Oval.

Brilliant backrower Pensio Gela was involved in everything for Iggy Park, scoring a hat-trick and finding himself placed on report for a lifting tackle on Kirwan fullback Eruweti Gunn-James.

The game was in the balance at the break, locked at 10 points apiece, but the class of Iggy Park shone through in the second with four unanswered tries.

Ignatius Park fullback Myles Rosemond looked deadly in the early stages but it was Kirwan who struck first down the right flank after being blown a penalty for a crusher tackle deep in attack.

But it didn’t take long for Iggy Park to take the lead, with Gela scoring his first of the afternoon when he collected a great inside ball and stepped past Gunn-James to score.

A mistake from Gunn-James on tackle one of the next Kirwan set handed possession back to the Park and five-eighth Lincoln Baker sliced through the defence two tackles later to extend his school’s lead.

Kirwan winger Kynan Spilsbury zipped down the sideline to score on the stroke of halftime to give kicker Riley Carbone the chance to tie up the game and the Queensland schoolboy raised the flags.

There was plenty of sting in the second half as both teams looked to take control.

Each side felt the brunt of bone-crunching defence as the rival schools traded blows until Gela snatched his team the win.

Gela collected his second try, this time in the right corner, before completing his hat-trick in the left corner five minutes later.

Jarred Mipara and Rosemond each scored late tries to put the result beyond doubt.

Ignatius Park College will play in the grand final against the winner of Mackay SHS and St Patrick’s, with their semi-final played on Thursday.

See the full draw below of a big week of Queensland Schoolboys action.

PAYNE CUP PREVIEWS

ST AUGUSTINE’S v ST PATRICK’S MACKAY

St Augustine’s College, Cairns is on Cowboys watch ahead of Wednesday’s Aaron Payne Cup semi-final showdown with St Patrick’s College.

The elite schoolboy rugby league competition’s new kids on the block will start as heavy underdogs against the Mackay powerhouse, led by a pair of junior Cowboys in the spine.

Coach Kris O’Farrell said his team were on high alert for hooker Xavier Kerrisk and halfback Jaxon Purdue as the college’s fairytale debut season reaches a make-or-break point.

St Pats College hooking gun Xavier Kerrisk.

“They have a lot more experience than us,” O’Farell said.

“We have to nullify their spine, put them under pressure, complete our sets and put in a strong kick-chase. Funny things can happen in rugby league.

“Only a quarter of our team play club rugby league, so we’ve got nothing to lose. This was always our goal for our first season, making the semi-final. We’ve got a young team, predominantly Year 11, so it’s going to be a win-win for us.”

St Patrick’s coach Ian Schifilliti, brother of inaugural Cowboys hooker Dean, predicted the midfield to be a decisive battleground.

“It will be the effort in the middle that will win or lose this game,” Schiffiliti said.

“It’s not just the standard gaining metres through the middle but the plays turning up on the inside, little pushes being applied, which is what we’ve been focused on.

“We played them in Confro and their halfback (Lachlan Magill) is a really good footballer and a running group of forwards, particularly their lock (Jack Rix), but a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.

“We’re really aware that this is it for us; we’re ready to go and St Augustine’s will definitely be ready to go.”

KIRWAN SHS v IGNATIUS PARK COLLEGE

Kirwan State High School has pledged to wipe all memory of last round’s 36-8 smashing of Ignatius Park College ahead of Wednesday’s Aaron Payne Cup semi-final rematch, but its opponents are doing the opposite.

It was the equal-worst defeat in more than a decade of Townsville’s top school footy rivalry and Iggy Park coach Zeb Kyle revealed his players planned to harness that pain with their season on the line.

Passage to the Aaron Payne Cup grand final is up for grabs; for Iggy Park to defend its crown from last season, while Kirwan hopes to clinch its first title since 2020.

Kirwan will be without Kaiden Lahrs.

Kyle backed his players to be ready for revenge.

“We’re going to use it (the 36-8 defeat) to motivate us and learn from why it was that way,” Kyle said.

“They probably wanted it a bit more than us but if we get back to what we can do, and we want it, it’s there for us to take.”

Kirwan strolled through Ignatius Park’s defence both out wide and through the middle but Ignatius Park will come armed with a plan to blunt the Bears attack by denying the momentum the team craves.

The search for killer instinct has been coach Nathan Norford’s primary focus this week, having failed to land the winning blow in three tight matches, for two draws and a defeat.

“We know that the Iggy team is going to be a completely different team to the one they ran out against us two weeks ago,” Norford said.

“Any game that we play Iggy Park, in a semi-final, you know it’s going to be big and it’s going to be close.”

Kirwan will miss Australian Schoolboys representative lock Kaiden Lahrs to a lingering concussion, while Fijian track star Aisake Manna – who torched Ignatius Park for two tries last meeting – has suffered a quadriceps injury.

COWBOYS CHALLENGE PREVIEW

KIRWAN SHS v IGNATIUS PARK COLLEGE

Two of Queensland’s finest junior playmakers will come head-to-come in the curtain-raiser as the same schools battle for progression to the Cowboys Challenge grand final.

Queensland U15 halves Riley Carbone and Lincoln Baker will face off for Kirwan and Ignatius Park respectively in a match-up that has scintillated all season long.

The rivals tied in their opening clash before a Kirwan buzzer-beater snatched victory in final play during the rematch.

Rising Kirwan young gun Riley Carbone.

“It’s been pretty exciting,” Ignatius Park coach Gerry Escalada said.

“It will be close again. The two teams are evenly matched, but for us it will be about sticking to our plan, which we didn’t do enough last time out.”

Kirwan coach Mitch Wells said the dramatic victory in their last meeting had built belief in his side.

“We don’t want to overcomplicate it at the end of the day,” he said.

“We know in rugby league that simple works and we just need to execute the game plan that we know: do the hard work in the middle and finish out wide.”

Ignatius Park half Nat Essery and forward Cooper Fletcher make up a strong supporting cast for Baker while Carbone’s Kirwan fullback Eruweti Gunn-James is a player of tremendous promise.