Northern Rivers raid Gold Coast Trophy Cabinet. In an unprecedented night of success three Northern Rivers based junior AFL players were awarded the highest honours in their respective age groups by taking out the Gold Coast AFL Juniors `Best and Fairest' awards with one also being awarded Gold Coast Junior AFL `Player of the Year'. The first recipient was Matt Lodge from Bangalow who won the Under14 Division 1 Best and Fairest as well as the highly prestigious Gold Coast Junior AFL Player of the Year. Matt was naturally delighted with his achievements and to win both awards was just recognition of a fine year which saw Matt earn representative honours for the Gold Coast Stingrays and be selected to attend The Lions AFL Academy for junior player development. The second recipient was Angus Graham from Bakersvale who won the Under 16 Division 2 Best and Fairest. Angus has had an exceptional year and was the outstanding winner in his division. Angus now hopes to cap off a great year with a Premiership medal when the Storm play Coomera on Sunday in the Division 2 Grand Final. As if that wasn't enough glory for Northern Rivers footballers, Dale Walker from Mullumbimby who plays in Under 16 Division 1 for Tweed Coolangatta FC took out the Best and Fairest award for his age group. Dales result was all-the-more amazing considering Tweed Coolangatta failed to win a game this year. He polled in 14 of 16 games against many players who are considered very strong chances of playing in the National AFL. Ean Jones who was there to witness these events was naturally delighted. `Considering that two of the three boys have been raised in the local Northern Rivers football league the result is a very strong affirmation that we are doing a few things right down here in terms of player development. When you consider we are about to play a grand final in the Gold Coast Competition with a Northern Rivers based team and the fact that our boys did so well in the best and Fairest awards it can only point to a very strong future for Junior AFL on the Northern Rivers". For More information contact Ean Jones on 0429 200 506
Last Modified on 04/03/2011 18:45