Brothers battle bulls at Great Western

Alan Kennedy | 31st December 2008

BULL RIDING: There must be something in the water at Mundubbera, as brothers Matt and Craig Postle put in top-class performances on the first night of the Bundaberg Rum PBR Pro Tour show on Tuesday.

Riders from around Australia were at the Great Western Hotel to be a part of the show and pick up the prizemoney from the first round of the pro tour season.

With two rounds guaranteed and a further round for the top 10 average scores, there was plenty on the line as points on the board are always valuable.

The Postle boys did that by both posting scores that are very competitive.

Going into the second round it was Matt who enjoyed the overall lead in the competition, posting a score of 86.5 points on a lively Trevor Dunne bull named Laguna. It was a solid ride as Laguna was one of the bigger beasts on show at close to 1000kg and producing an uncomfortable corkscrewing action that looked hard for its rider to predict.

Craig was equally convincing on the Kent Hansen bull Party Animal and his fine ride earned him 82 points from the 100 point maximum.

For the first night the honours went to the beasts but only just, as 13 out of 40 cowboys completed their eight seconds of torture to post first-round scores.

Some of the successful cowboys completed their ride with a style that made it look so very easy, others hung on grimly so that they could at least gain valuable points.

Mackay's Ryan Storey looked comfortable on Daylight as he scored 85 points while Cody Heffernan rode the very good bull, Pearl Jam, for 85.5 points.

Later in the evening Pearl Pam suffered the indignity of being ridden a second time as Cody Tapp extracted a further 83.5 points from the beast.

Some riders looked too comfortable, like Kevin “Jock” Connolly who could only draw 79.5 points from a Kent Hansen bull, Hawkeye, that seemed to lack fire.

Saras Ramsay looked accomplished in scoring 83 points to make his bull Cranky Franky even crankier, while the most unorthodox eight seconds was achieved by Heath Shrimp, who hung on grimly, and successfully, on the inside of Jerry Springer's spin, despite being parallel with the dirt to get 76 points on the board.

Rockhampton crowds love Ben Seeds and he had the final ride of the night, gaining 85.5 points plus lengthy applause for his majestic effort.

Not all the big names had rides to remember.

Professional Bull Rider 2008 champion Pete Farley was given a massive build-up only to be unceremoniously dumped in the dirt by a fired-up Cloud Nine before he really got started on his ride.

The very promising Jamie Hasted was also given the big build-up by the ring commentator but he too found the going too tough and merely achieved the most spectacular dismount of the night.

Hasted lost his grip on the beast, Natural Assassin, early in the ride and slipped on to the bull's neck at a 90-degree angle to the beast.

The Natural Assassin soon tired of this intrusion on his space and casually tossed the luckless Hasted skywards.