We have an early flight to Cairns on Saturday to finish our season against Northern Pride who are in fifth spot and in good form but I’m expecting our boys to compete right to the end – as they have in just about every game this season.
It was disappointing to have 50 points put on us by Ipswich Jets last Saturday and to be honest we were just “off” with our performance, which can happen in a long season.
They scored seven tries from kicks because we just didn’t get in good enough position or didn’t show enough awareness to stop them getting advantage from those kicks. They certainly shouldn’t have so easily scored their second and third tries and if we stopped that, it could have been a different game.
The Jets just grew in confidence from that and they are the type of team who are very hard to contain when that happens.
And to have Bryce Cartwright ruled eligible to play, then ineligible because the Jets protested, after playing only eight minutes the night before for the Titans was disappointing and something the QRL has to sort out as far as the clarity of their rules.
I just want to see our guys compete for the hole 80 minutes in Cairns and take that memory into the off-season because there is no doubt we have made a lot of progress this season, even though it has been disappointing results-wise since we had that great run of eight wins from nine games mid-season.
We’ve won only one from the last eight but were beaten by the Hunters 24-20 when we had a try disallowed at the death, lost to Easts Tigers by only eight and had it all over Burleigh Bears in then first half-hour and were in the game until the last 10 minutes. They’re all in the top six, which shows we’re not far away.
In in that period we’ve had a lot of injuries and been without skipper Cheyne Whitelaw, whose leadership and quality workload has been missed, and Brayden McGrady who has been picked up by the Panthers next season.
We’ve had a lot of young players who have really improved as the season went on and that’s great for the club. We’re a young side and that showed against the better opposition in the competition, so we’ll be better for that.
We need to head to Cairns and have a dig and hopefully win but at least compete right to the end against a side in the top five. We really want to see the effort and the intensity for the 80 minutes.
Kodi Parsons, who has been pretty good for us in the past month, will go back to A grade to play in Kevin Campion’s team in their semi-final against Runaway Bay to help them out.
We have a few more guys who are also eligible to play in the A-grade finals but we need them to stay in Intrust Super Cup with the injuries. Shaun Carney, Kirk Murphy and Rex Johnson also qualify so it will be good for them to go back and strengthen Campo’s team who finished third and will have two bites of the cherry.
So good luck to the A-grade boys on Sunday at Bycroft Oval (2pm kick-off). Before then, we hope to finish our campaign on a real positive note before we hopefully cheer them on right through to the grand final.
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