Warm weather clears way for kickoff

GAME ON: Ipswich Junior Rugby League chairman Brendan Bowers inspects the field at Briggs Road Sporting Complex ahead of this weekend’s opening round.

Claudia Baxter

WARM weather has cleared the way for more than 2500 junior rugby league players to take the field this weekend.

The Ipswich Junior Rugby League (IJRL) will kick off its biggest season on record with matches across the city on Friday night.

The action will continue in Redbank Plains, Laidley, Lowood and Raceview on Saturday.

Most of last weekend’s trial matches were abandoned due to rain, but IJRL chairman Brendan Bowers said the league’s 13 clubs and 171 teams were raring to go.

“At this stage we’re looking good. We’ve been lucky with the weather this week and (Briggs Road Sporting Complex) has come up really well,” he said.

Conditions weren’t so bright earlier this month, with wet and wild weather dumping rain across Ipswich and boosting the combined levels of Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pine dams to more than 96 per cent.

The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted more showers for today and the rest of the weekend, with maximum temperatures in the high 20s.

Despite the threat of rain, Bowers remained confident of a successful season launch and said the IJRL would put the rest of the city ahead of the game to protect the fields.

“At the end of the day, we want to maintain the fields for the community, so if that means cancelling one weekend of fixtures due to wet weather then we’d certainly be prepared to do that,” he said.

“We appreciate all that Ipswich City Council does for us in terms of preparation, and we want our juniors to play rugby league all season on the best possible fields with the best possible facilities.

“Sacrificing a few games in the short term is a better prospect than jeopardising a lot of games in the long term.”