On arrival in Sydney the tour party made the most of the excellent facilities at ADF Base Randwick to acclimatise and prepare for the opening fixture of the three-match series. Renown United are a ‘feeder’ club for the St George Illawarra Dragons and have played and hosted RNRL teams since the first tour in 2002 taking the spoils on every occasion until now.

Head Coach Darren Bamford watched his side dominate the first half with skipper Ben Taylor leading the Brothers to a 24:6 half time lead. The opening score after only 7 minutes went to Elliott Richardson making his debut for the RN Senior squad, scrum half Rhys Joel converting, 6:0. The game went from bad to worse for the home side, losing a player to the sin bin for 10 minutes for a tip tackle on skipper Taylor. RNRL took full advantage of the numerical advantage posting 2 more converted tries, one each for ET(ME) Gav Duffy and, 2023 Young Player Of The Year, AB Tyler Leighton, both converted by Joel. The home side did pull one back but that score was cancelled out by another for RNRL, LPT James Teixeira touching down with another conversion for Rhys Joel, 24:6, and that was the half. A fantastic 40 minutes by the Brothers, going into the sheds with a comfortable and well-deserved lead.

Despite a heavy dew forming making ball handling more difficult it was business as usual in the second half for the Brothers. Ten minutes in and winger Kini Dakuliga rounded of a sweeping RN move for his sides 5th of the match with Joel once more slotting over the two pointer 30:6. The final try, on a memorable night, went to 2nd row Eden Quantock who touched down for RNRL’s sixth and final try of the night. Rhys Joel rounded off a perfect night for himself personally nailing his sixth conversion to put his side almost out of sight at 36:6. The final quarter although scoreless for the RN was not without incident, the Renown side efforts put the RN defence under huge pressure which, in the context of the tour, was no bad thing. This pressure was rewarded with a brace of two converted tries of their own to close the scores to just 18 points. Although the game had been played in great spirit the ref had to hold up the game when it was spotted that Renown had 14 players on the pitch. That was resolved only for the floodlights to fail in the last few minutes of time, on balance the refs decision to end the game at that point was probably the right one! The Renown management claimed it had nothing to do with them but the jury is still out on that one.
On a more serious note it was an impressive start to the three-match series and a great confidence booster for the Brothers. Tyler Leighton was awarded Man Of The Match for his excellent performance throughout the game in the No 9 shirt.

So, a powerful start to the tour for Bamford’s players ahead of two more matches planned for the series. Next up the RNRL will face the Coogee Dolphins on Saturday 20th April with the final match on the 26th of April when the RNRL Brothers will take on the Royal Australian Navy ‘Tridents’. This is a one-off test match and is a curtain raiser to the Manly Sea Eagles and Parramatta Eels NRL fixture and is part of the Australian annual ANZAC day commemorations.