PBR Australia News

Back to All News

RICHARDSON SECURES HIS FIRST PBR EVENT WIN

09/03/2012

RICHARDSON SECURES HIS FIRST PBR EVENT WIN

Near 3000 Central Queensland Bull Riding fans were treated to a night of bull riding highs and lows as riders from around the nation converged on the seaside town of Yeppoon for the inaugural Touring Pro Series event at the St Brendan’s’ College Arena on Saturday night.

In Round 1 of the competition, 17 riders would be successful in making it to the 8 second whistle with runner up Rookie of the Year, Tully’s, Sam O’Connor setting the pace with an impressive 87.5 point score on Trevor and Tony Dunne’s – Hang Tough in the opening section of the competition. 2012 Australian Champion, Dave Kennedy also continued his consistent form with an 86 point score aboard the Brian Duggan owned, Prison Break followed by Westwood, QLD 2011 Rookie of the Year, Jesse Van Nek marking 84.5 on another Dunne owned bull, Black Ice to fill the top 3 positions going into the Championship Round.

With a gap of only 9 points between 1^st and 10^th qualifying positions and a superb line up of bulls featured in the final Championship Round including the likes of That’s Gold, Wild Thing, Little Brother, Cochise, The Hump, Flash for Cash, it was always going to be one of those competitions where anyone of the top 10 qualifiers could take out the competition as all these bulls had the ability to deliver high marking scores.

Included in the top 10 qualifiers were crowd favourites and ex St Brendan’s College Students, Guy Ford, Mitch and Justin Paton who were all determined to do well and even though they were unsuccessful in the final they put out an exceptional effort and tested some of the sports toughest bulls in front of their old school mates.

It wasn’t until the 5^th rider in the Championship Round that a score would be posted with Gressford NSW bull rider Cliff Richardson conquering Flash for Cash for an 83.5 score, however there were 5 more riders to go including Kennedy, O’Connor, Van Nek and Wilkinson. One by one the bulls continued to dominate and win the match ups until it came down to the last match up of the night, round 1 winner O’Connor and the locally owned Briand Duggan bull Cochise. Even though O’Connor has been in great form this season, he was no match for the black and white spotted bull who defeated one of the sports rising young stars and giving Cliff Richardson his first win ever on the PBR Tour and a strong start to the 2012/2013 season.

It had been 5 years since we have had an event in this area and it was great to be back and now involved with the St Brendan’s College event. It is a great school, beautiful location and an exceptional committee to work with, stated PBR General Manager – Glen Young. This was certainly a unique event for us, however to see the students actively and enthusiastically involved with the set up and maintenance of the arena through to competing in the College Rodeo component all contributed to the overall success of the event. We are well aware of the great talent this school has produced in the past and after watching these students compete on Saturday we are very excited to see that we have more talent that will be joining our PBR Tour in the near future.

St Brendan’s College rose to another level with clean sweeping the steer ride and junior bull riding competitions as well as taking the lead 2-1 in the annual St Brendan’s versus Nudgee Challenge Perpetual Trophy.

From here the PBR Tour now heads to the below locations as the riders strive to qualify for the upcoming November Cup Series Events in Wollongong on Nov 10, Townsville on Nov 17 and Tamworth on Nov 24:

Hughenden – Sept 8

Innisfail – Sept 15

Bundaberg – Sept 22 & 23

Condoblin NSW – Sept 29

For more information, log on to www.pbraustralia.com

Yeppoon PBR Touring Pro Results: