The Philippine Airlines (PAL) Tamaraws again entered 4 teams in the Cabramatta International 9s tournament held at St Mary\u2019s Rugby League club last month. Teams 3 and 4 reached the quarter finals while Teams 1 and 2 the Semi-finals.<\/p>\n
On the eve of this year\u2019s tournament, PAL Tamaraws Head coach and Philippine Rugby League founder Clayton Watene<\/strong> announced his retirement. It was only fitting that the PAL Tamaraws wanted to send off Clayton on a high note.<\/p>\n Our inaugural entry into this tournament in 2012 looked like history repeating itself with the PAL Tamaraws having an opening loss to Blacktown Workers 22-10. It was followed by an 18-18 draw against Cook Islands and a\u00a0 resounding victory over Portugal at 24-8.<\/p>\n The Tamaraws had a tough encounter in the Plate Quarter finals against the Fijians in preparation for the South Pacific Games. Initially, both teams scored 3 tries each with PAL Tamaraw Tom Gunn<\/strong>, who flew down from Darwin to play in this tournament. Gunn scored the crucial last try for the Philippines bringing the final score to 16-14!<\/p>\n The PAL Tamaraws were [scheduled] to face another Pacific Island nation in American Samoa. They had flown in many of their players from New Zealand, in preparation for the South Pacific Games.<\/p>\n The Philippine team dug deep into the ranks of the American Samoans being in possession of the ball from kick off. They worked hard to get into a scoring position with only one tackle left and 13 seconds to go, a speculative pass was thrown which was intercepted by American Samoa ending a repeat of the 2012 Fairy Tale!<\/p>\n A Facebook message sent to Mark de Ubago<\/strong>, coach of the Philippine \u00a0team 2 by one of his players summed up the reason why so many Filipino Australians and New Zealanders passionately get involved with the PAL Tamaraws. Will Simpson:<\/strong> \u201cIt was an honour representing my motherland today at the Cabra 9s tournament. Hardest game(s) of footy I’ve played, was a very good experience thanks <\/em>Mark<\/em><\/a> and the <\/em>Philippines National Rugby League<\/em><\/a> for the effort put in managing 4 teams in this comp playing at two separate parks.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0feeling honored at <\/em>St Marys Rugby League Club<\/em><\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n (The Philippine National Rugby League is the governing body of Rugby League Football in the Philippines. Its mission is to enable\u00a0 Filipinos to have a healthy lifestyle through their participation in Rugby League Football and to be competitive amongst the Asian Rugby League playing nations.) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Philippine Airlines (PAL) Tamaraws again entered 4 teams in the Cabramatta International 9s tournament held at St Mary\u2019s Rugby League club last month. Teams 3 and 4 reached the quarter finals while Teams 1 and 2 the Semi-finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}