Woden wanted it back badly – and we were not giving it up. Queue the fifth instalment of Woden trying to win the trophy back but Corroboree saying, ‘hands off – its ours!’. The Mick Morris Relay Carnival was held in blistering summer conditions and Woden sent a team bigger than ours for the first time in five years. They were making a massive effort this year and in reality, this Club President felt like we may have been out gunned, but we wouldn’t be going down without a fight.

The U6-U8 portion of the day was awesome for Corroboree as we won 12 of the first 18 races. The Under 7s won 5 out of 6 races. Combined with the fact that Woden only had two U7 girls and they chose to only do one race before opting to go home, we were in the lead after the first session by 44 points. This was an unexpected and one we hoped would be tough to run down.

U9-U12 session proved to be a tough time with way too many delays between races that didn’t need to be – in the end the session ran two hours overtime, and I can assure you, I’ll be doing everything I can to ensure that doesn’t happen again. On the track Woden won 16 of the 24 races and we won 7 of the other 8 and finished second in many of the others. After session two our lead had been reduced to just 22.5 points.

U13-U17 portion was dramatic. With every point crucial, because we only had three boys in the U14 division, so we knew we’d lose points there and we had a point where one of our teams didn’t hear the call up and missed their race (they went on and won the next two races so 13 points had gone begging). One of our senior athletes for some reason donned the yellow shirt of Woden and helped them place higher than they might have (there is a time to be nice and a time to not be so nice young lady). Thankfully she then wore Corroboree blue again and helped the team to a big win in the Mixed Medley relay.

There were also two boys from Woden who are speedsters but decided it was too hot after the first race and went home. Our teams then beat Woden in the next two races. Points up, points down, missed points, winning points for other clubs and in the end it all came down to a 2.5 point margin in our favour (660.75 to 658.25).

It was so close we asked the officials to take the pointscore away to be recounted, just to ensure, everything was above board. It took a week to find out but Corroboree had won for the fifth time in a row. It remains to be seen if that breaks Woden’s heart or they come out again next season, even bigger. We’ll be there again putting as many athletes as we can on the track to win. If the Woden fast boys had of stayed, if the U7 Woden girls did just one more race it could have been a different story which is why we as many athletes there as we can.

Big thank you to James, Andrew and David who were in the hot sun all day, Will who tried to get session two moving by jumping in as a Marshall and all our parent volunteers, especially Will and Fiona who were our Team Managers on the day – a busy job with such a big team. David and I have ideas as to how we can make it run quicker next season (ironically if we made it happen this year, those fast Woden boys may not have gone home!) so when the club puts the call out, sign up and help us win title number six!