Sport
30 May, 2025
Pride finally breaks drought
THE tide has finally turned for Northern Pride, the team has defeated the Central Queensland Capras in a high-pressure match 32-14 and have reignited the hope of climbing the ladder in the Hostplus Cup.
After weeks of ‘almost’ wins, Pride has finally broken the curse and brought a win home after defeating the Capras 32-14 in what coach Russ Aitken called a match with too many fundamental errors but with lots of resilience from the team and now they’re looking to get back into the competition.
Although currently sitting in 14th place, Mr Aitken believes they can still turn the competition around and are hoping to do so against the PNG Hunters on Sunday, a team that defeated them in pre-season.
“It’s always a rough trip down to Rockhampton. Having a look at what sort of team they’d be and we knew they wouldn’t go away the whole game, they’re a team that hangs in there, so we needed to be tough and show more character than we’ve been showing in the previous weeks,” Mr Aitken said.
“Our performance wasn’t great, however, the mindset that we went in with allowed us to navigate all the pressure that we put ourselves under, so I’m pleased with the mindset of the group.
“We’ve learned from our performance the week before against the Bears but we’re still putting too much pressure on ourselves and it’s definitely something we need to fix leading into this weekend.
“There were too many fundamental errors from the group and that’s two weeks in a row that we’ve done this and we need to rectify that going into what’s going to be a real tough match with PNG.
“I don’t think this is over, there’s plenty of rounds to go and that’s not the issue, the issue is how we play and how we keep progressing, our footy has plateaued over the last two weeks and we need to fix that.
“So we have time to turn the season around, we just need to keep stacking good performances. I’ve got no doubt we’ll win the required games.”
Mr Aitken said they were gearing up for another physical match against the Hunters.
“After 10 rounds of footy both teams have progressed a fair bit since we met in pre-season,” he said.
“We’ve obviously learned things from the trial game and they’ll bring a similar game than the Capras, a combative style, really physical, so last week was a good precursor to this week.”
