Sport
4 April, 2025
Pride finding their pace
DESPITE losing to last year’s premiership champions and current top of the table North’s Devils last week, Northern Pride’s coach Russ Aitken said he’s finally seeing a strong team capable of taking the competition by storm.
Northern Pride has accumulated its third loss in the Hostplus Cup 32-14 against this season’s team to beat – the North’s Devils – who are not only the former premiers, but currently the top team in the championship.
The match was tough on a Northern Pride that’s beginning to find its offensive advantages, its pressure points and its pace in the competition but Mr Aitken says he finally sees the spark.
“It was a much-improved performance, we started to play the footy that we want to be known for,” he said.
“There are obviously still improvements to make but we built a lot of pressure on North’s, I think that 80 per cent of the teams in the competition wouldn’t have been able to keep up with us so I’m happy with the performance.
“We need to tidy up some execution details now and a few individual errors that are happening too often.
“North’s are the top team but it was a good performance, we didn’t get the results, which everyone wants at the club, I didn’t think the score reflected the game, it was a good battle, most teams wouldn’t have been able to stand the amount of pressure we built.”
Mr Aitken said that after last week’s match, Pride was more eager than ever to bring this level of grit against the Mackay Cutters tomorrow in their home ground.
“We definitely feel more confident going against the Cutters, we’ve set a new standard to our footy that we need not to drop and we need to improve,” he said.
“Now we know what our footy looks like, we’ve put it out there on the field and we need to stick at it for longer periods.
“We want to use our footy, we want to be physical, an aggressive team in defence, we want to be a team that builds more pressure on the opposition but can also withstand it, which is probably our missing ingredient.
“The Cutters will be up for it, the match is down in Mackay and they have some big experienced players coming down from the Cowboys and big strong outside backs so I expect a big power game from them.”
