Peter Mulholland Cup live stream: Erindale College travels to Sydney to play Matraville Sports High

Erindale set up a tasty encounter against Patrician Brothers, Fairfield next month after adding to Matraville Sports’ NRL Schoolboys Cup nightmare on Thursday. Relive all the action.

The fight is on for top spot in central pool two after Erindale scored nine tries in a 50-0 win over Matraville Sports High School in the Peter Mulholland Cup on Thursday.

Brock Apolevski and Ollie Bolatagaici planted two tries each, while fullback Sam Gash scored a try and kicked seven goals in a great individual display.

Erindale will now face Patrician Brothers, Fairfield in a hotly-anticipated contest at Seiffert Oval on Tuesday, July 25.

Erindale’s Lachlan Cunanan is upended by the Matraville defence. Picture: Richard Dobson

Despite coming into the match as comfortable favourites, Erindale were slow off the mark before Jayden Svager found the try line after a tightly-contested first 10 minutes.

Half-back Jonah Anderson said it was a bit ‘touch and go’ early on.

“I think there were a couple of errors from both teams,” Anderson said.

“But we had a talk and knew we just had to complete our sets and get back in the grind.”

From there, Erindale couldn’t be stopped, with two more tries coming in quick succession from Max Mercer and Ollie Bolatagici.

Gash then added himself to the tryscorers just before halftime, expertly converting all four tries to give Erindale a solid 24-0 lead.

No way through the Erindale defence for Harlem Peters. Picture: Richard Dobson

Erindale gained confidence in the second half, scoring five more tries, including two from Apolevski and staying strong in defence to deny Matraville any chance at points.

Anderson said the upcoming clash with the defending championst ‘won’t be an easy game’.

“We’ll go back, watch some vision on them and on us, see what we can work on, and go from there,” Anderson said.

“We know we have plenty of attack in us, we know we can score points, but we will just need to be stronger in defence.”

Blake Hovi bursts through the Matraville defence.

Xavier Cacciotti gets the Erindale attack flowing. Picture: Richard Dobson.

PREVIEW

Erindale College coach Ashley Barnes hasn’t been deceived by the margin of his side’s opening round Peter Mulholland Cup victory.

He knows his side were ‘pretty poor’ with their discipline in the 38-8 success over Illawarra Sports and must improve on their travels against Matraville Sports.

Catch all of the action LIVE from Pioneers Park, Malabar on Thursday from 1pm exclusively on KommunityTV as part of our season-long coverage of the Peter Mulholland Cup.

Discipline has certainly been a major focus at Erindale training this week.

“We’ve been able to look at areas of our game against Illawarra Sport that we want to improve and just really focus on getting better,” Barnes said.

Barnes said he and his team are ‘really excited’ to travel up to Sydney for the first time in 2023.

“They’re a quality side, they’ve always had a good program there,” Barnes said.

“I think they’ve got some really good individual players there that could cause some dramas.”

Matraville’s long-awaited return to the competition was disappointing, going down 56-0 to reigning champions Patrician Brothers Fairfield.

But Barnes said the loss will only motivate Matraville, and he will definitely not be under-estimating them.

“I think they’ll be really keen,” he said. 

“This is their first year back in the competition and their first game didn’t go to plan, so I’m sure back at their home ground they’ll be really keen to improve their performance.

“That always makes teams more dangerous.”

TEAMS

Erindale College

1. Sam Gash, 2. Olli Bolatagici, 3. Lachlan Cunanan, 4. Mark Tuialii, 5. Alex Sweeney, 6. Blake Hovi, 7. Jonah Anderson, 20. Jesse Millin, 9. Mitchell Brophy, 10. Jayden Svager, 11. Max Mercer, 12. Brock Apolevski, 13. Xavier Cacciotti, 14. Michael Tito, 15. Josh Urbaniak, 16. Lachlan Bishop, 17. Andrew Muir, 18. Kruger Roach

Matraville Sports High

1. Kylan Simon, 2. Luke Tonnet, 3. Sean Colman-Marin, 4. Jayden Kavanagh, 5. Sean McLoughlin, 6. Cooper Taaffe, 7. Harry Rooke, 8. Dom Vueti, 9. Kory Taaffe, 10. Kye Walker, 11. Harlem Peters, 12. Danahi McGilvray, 13. John Vanderwalle, 14. Jarrakai Simpson, 15. Tex Hedderman, 16. Jeikie Emani, 17. Jay Kay Moon, 18. Jake Allcroft