RUGBY League premiers Allora Wattles swapped the football field for the rodeo arena on Saturday night to raise a few funds and have a lot of fun.
Club president Aaron Scheid hailed the club’s first rodeo as a success – but how successful will be confirmed later in the week when the club’s committee sits down and works out how much was raised from the event.
However just on sheer numbers through the gate, the club is pretty happy with its major fundraiser for the year.
“Crowd-wise, we think we had more than 1000 people – but we haven’t got the final numbers,” Mr Scheid said.
“We probably had more there than we expected. This was the first time we’d held a full rodeo. We have had the pig races and the Moo poo lottery.”
In fact the Pig Races, which kicked off the day’s events, are now in their third year but are usually held as a pre-season event. But with the idea to put on a rodeo, it was decided to combine the events into a big family fun day. A move that paid off for the club, which is still on a high after winning this year’s premiership in A Grade.
Aaron said the event was so successful and so well supported by the community that it was hoped it would now become an annual event.
Of course the highlight of the night was the celebrity bull ride with footballers from the Wattles and several other local teams taking on the challenge to ride a bull for a night.
Aaron admitted there was a lot of interest from the crowd and from the competitors, in fact in the end 10 competitors lined up to take on the bulls.
In the end the winner was Kilarney player Mick Brackin – he’s making a bit of habit of winning these events, taking the same title at a rodeo held by the Warwick Cowboys earlier in the year.
