For the second year running Townsville have secured the Foley Shield in both the Men’s and Women’s competition, this time in front of an adoring home crowd.
Heading into day 3 of the competition Mackay and Townsville were met with a simple equation for victory, win today and win the Foley Shield.
After both teams had blown out Cairns in their prior matches, Townsville vs Mackay was poised to go down to the wire.
The first half certainly followed expectations, with both sides going blow for blow and entering the sheds all tied up at 10 apiece.
The scoreline would remain static twenty minutes into the second half before Tajshon Messa-Santo would pounce on a loose pick up from Mackay’s fullback, grounding the ball and putting Townsville’s nose in front.
Mere minutes later history would repeat itself, as the pressure of an oncoming Declan Dowson would put Mackay’s fullback off, as he fumbled a bomb and allowed Tajshon Messa-Santo to once more pounce on a loose ball to extend Townsville’s lead.
From there the floodgates were broken wide open, as an onslaught of Townsville attacking football ensued.
Following the fulltime siren the scoreboard read 40-10 in favour of Townsville, as the Townsville Sports Reserve received a generous watering of XXXX Gold courtesy of the celebratory hysteria of the Townsville men.
For the women, Townsville came in as red-hot favourites, and they showed why within the first three minutes.
Following a damaging run from Jahntae Mara, dummy half Jenna Poole spotted a staggered defensive line and pounced from dummy-half for the game’s opening points.
Following Townsville’s third try courtesy of Emma Hannigan, the scoring became metronomic.
Townsville simply overpowered Mackay with their barnstorming middles and silky edge back-rowers, as their halves pairing of Latisha Kaitap and Angela Solomon facilitated the ball to their prolific outside backs.
Despite Mackay being overpowered in a fiery affair, their determination never wavered.
With every try conceded their players became more vocal in the huddles, delivering instructions and lambasting their past errors.
This determination came to fruition late in the match, with Mackay crossing through experienced campaigner and last year’s woman of the series, Ataliah Love.
Despite the heavy defeat, the Mackay women were overjoyed to avoid a goose egg.
XXXX FOLEY SHIELD 2025 RESULTS
DAY 1
TOWNSVILLE MEN 40 DEF CAIRNS MEN 16
TOWNSVILLE WOMEN 48 DEF CAIRNS WOMEN 14
DAY 2
MACKAY MEN 58 DEF CAIRNS MEN 6
CAIRNS WOMEN 40 DEF MACKAY WOMEN 0
DAY 3
TOaWNSVILLE MEN 40 DEF MACKAY MEN 10
TOWNSVILLE WOMEN 50 DEF MACKAY WOMEN 4
