The Yass Magpies First grade side hasn’t been able to compete with consistency in the Canberra First Grade Competition for a number of years. It is not from a lack of trying and a lack of talent, but only because good troops and reinforcements can be hard to find positionally, from year to year. The Canberra Region Rugby League is meant to supply a quota each year, but that varies depending on needs further up the supply chain.
For the first time in a decade a fortnight ago, Yass pulled off a win in the first round of the competition. On home soil too. They look to have also joined with some handy wing Raiders who stood out over the last two weeks.
The Yass Valley Times caught up with President Tim Clayton and First Grade joint Coach Anthony Vitler across the last two weeks to help analyse the 2026 season and the first two matches.
Tim said, “We had a good home crowd, our game was really good actually.”
“It was exciting. It was good to win. We were up 38-10 with eight minutes to go, and they scored two late. It was a dominant display.
“[Yass] might have just took their foot off the pedal towards the end, they were gassed, but it was good.”
According to Tim, the most pleasing thing to occur from the weekend was seeing the team defend their mistakes and errors, which was something they previously hadn’t been very good at.
“Our goal line defence was outstanding,” he said.
“And our effort for the 80 minutes. Everyone played their part. Everyone did their bit. The scramble defence was really good. There was a lot of important one on one tackles [that] were made.”
Clayton came on board at Yass in the President’s role around Covid in 2020.
For him, one would expect he would be happy to get the hoodoo broken.
“Oh, it was. It was really pleasing, and it’s more than just me, you know, it’s the whole club,” he said.
“It’s our supporters, it’s our support staff, it’s the players, the coaches. It just creates a really good atmosphere for everyone. And it was just great to be part of, especially in the dressing shed after the game singing the song. It was really good.”
“We had our season launch after that and everyone was really upbeat, really keen about what was going ahead. All the players were keen.”
Saturday saw Yass come up against 2025 Grand Finalists, The Queanbeyan Roos, who beat them by 60 points last year and gave them a big shock.
Yass had two in the bin at one stage but still managed to keep fighting, although poor discipline is thought to have gotten the better of them.
Vitler agreed that poor discipline, consistency and dropped balls were the difference between walking away from Walker Park with a win or a loss. The final score was 20-12 to Roos, with both Kaidan and Cody Bell scoring tries and Kaidan converting.
Cody Bell has continued his try scoring exploits from 2025 with three tries in round 1 and another in round 2. It could easily have been more against Roos on Saturday at Walker Park.
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