Sport
20 June, 2025
Pride need win against Clydesdales tomorrow
IT was a rough weekend for Northern Pride, both the HPC and BMD teams were defeated in Brisbane, while the men’s team is struggling with consistency, the women’s spirited debut performance wasn’t enough to take the win.
Consistency has become the main obstacle for the Hostplus Cup team, who can’t keep momentum, after an exciting win at home against the Magpies two weeks ago the team went on to lose last weekend against the Brisbane Tigers 30-10.
For their debut the BMD premiership women’s team gave a brave and hard fight in Brisbane, but it wasn’t enough to beat a very prepared Tigers who won 26-16.
Despite their first loss coach Colin Wilkie said he was confident the team could quickly improve and start taking wins and this match had been a learning experience for the girls.
Both teams will face the Clydesdales tomorrow.
Although the HPC team has proved they can win, their biggest issue has become sustaining their victories. In the last few weeks the team has been accumulating wins followed by immediate losses and it was no exception last weekend when they had one of their worst performances.
Pride remains in 14th position on the ladder and will attempt to climb it against the Clydesdales who currently sit in 13th place.
“There were a fair few changes from the week before for us but we gathered a team we thought would get the result for us,” said head coach Russ Aitken. “We went into halftime 10-12 and we were playing well and had a chance to win the game by halftime, but we went into the second half and just didn’t execute how we wanted, and it was probably our worst performance on the second half.
“The boys were very disappointed in how we performed.”
Mr Aitken said with players from the Cowboys coming and going, continuity was becoming a big issue.
“We’ve had a lot of forced changes with lads from the Cowboys coming into the squad and then out of the squad, so the continuity isn’t there,” he said.
“A couple of those lads are in key positions so it impacts the continuity of our game but it doesn’t impact all the effort areas of the game which we want to pride ourselves on but we let ourselves down on the weekend.”
Mr Aitken said there was lots to work on ahead of the match against the Clydesdales tomorrow.
