For the last two decades, the Harden Hawks have been a force to be reckoned with in the George Tooke Shield. After being unceremoniously dumped from the Group 9 competition, which was founded by a meeting that ran past midnight after a four hour meeting on April 26, 1923 at Harden’s Grand Hotel, they were left competition-less.
Other teams have been allowed to stay, and played with less at times in a Group 9 competition which has fluctuated over the last two decades, and also highlighted the strength of the Gundagai Tigers with premierships flowing over the last deuce or so.
In the last five years, Harden have reached the finals every year. They have contested three grand finals lost to Bungendore in 2024 and 2025 and, as the 2026 season closed, they claimed the minor premiership and the Premiership, downing the North Canberra Bears.
Behind that sustained success stood a solid committee, and coach Nick Hall and his long-time offsider Andrew McIllhatton, known to everyone simply as Macca. Their time together at Harden has ended. Hall has decided he needs space and a year away from the main voice. McIllhatton will wait to see what his own sons decide and what the club needs. What they leave behind is a club that plays hard, sticks together, and punches well above the weight of a small country town.
Hall arrived at Harden in a single day. He was moving on from the Young Pickers. Someone made a call. He agreed to meet the President Jason Pollard. They talked, shook hands, and that was the deal.
“It started very simply and quickly, and it’s going to finish simply and quickly, too,” Hall said.
The next week he was driving across to start coaching. The community made it easy. There were no long negotiations or complicated contracts. Just a handshake and a shared understanding that they would get on with the footy.
McIllhatton followed almost immediately. He had known Hall since 1998. That was the year they first crossed paths. The friendship stuck. When Young decided to go in a different direction and the way Hall was treated did not sit right with McIllhatton, he jumped ship too.
Macca tells it like it is and that is why he became such a valued confidant for Hall and voice for the club.
“I didn’t really agree with the way he was treated when Young let him go, the way it was done, so I jumped ship too and joined him over here and had a great time,” he said.
The respect Hall commanded among the Young players was clear. A string of them followed across to Harden over the five years. “It shows how much respect he had from the players in Young… That just shows that he’s a good coach and a good bloke and he just loves footy, he loves it.”
Some were playing Group 9 and as Hall stated many had finished in U18s and needed to be put back in to shape, otherwise careers could be cut short.
Hall never set out to overhaul the club’s culture. “I can’t comment on what was there before. I didn’t really do much. I didn’t go with an intention to change anything. I just went there to play footy and just do me. So that’s all I sort of did, I just showed up and did what I normally do.”
What emerged was a combination of his approach and the club’s existing ways. “I just came and did my job and the club was doing what they were doing and we just moulded together, so it’s been enjoyable, been good.” McIllhatton was central to that daily work. He turned up twice a week, did as much as anyone, and handled the quiet jobs that keep a side running. Hall was clear about the contribution. “Macca has come with me, he’s done a lot. He shows up twice a week, he does just as much. When it comes to the culture, he’s pretty good. He’s been clubman of the year and those sort of things. He does a lot behind the scenes,” he said.
Hall’s own playing career had taught him the value of calm leadership. Even in his mid-forties and when the side was short on big fellas, he still had something to offer. He had a run with the Hawks early on, watched the video afterwards, and was disappointed in himself, yet he did not look out of place to the spectators. His standards were just high. He became a Coach players didn’t want to let down. A bicep injury ended any further thoughts of playing.
Through illness and the recent loss of his father he never pushed footy into the background. McIllhatton has known him for three decades and still cannot recall a single dummy spit or raised voice. “He’s just not one of those guys to get cranky, and that’s why he’s a good coach, he gets those little percenters out of players.”
Hall manages people. He finds a way to keep things steady when life gets complicated.
The results followed. In Hall’s first year the Hawks won their first semi-final and lost the second. Then came two grand finals. This season they finished the competition proper undefeated. The women’s side, the Hawkettes, also went through without a loss, registering only a draw. Winning the club Championship in 2026 was no easy feat, however, both sides went undefeated. “It’s something the club’s proud of, the club championship, and we’ve won it, I think, a few years.”
The path to the finals was not always clean. In the final round they faced Bungendore in a washout game and scraped home. “It was a shit fight. We were losing for a big part of it. Fumbled and bumbled our way through. We did put our best performance in. Scrapped and scrounged, it was probably a measure of Bungendore playing well too.” Holmesy had a great game. Casey Wall was solid. It was a team effort, yet Hall felt they had not quite brought their sharpest focus. “Maybe we took the foot off… maybe somewhere, we didn’t quite bring the same focus.” Still, they were through. Harden finished first, earned a week off, and would meet the winner of Crookwell and North Canberra. A win would put them straight into the grand final. The win over Bungendore also helped push Boorowa into fourth on points for and against. Hall was pleased for them. At the time he said, “That’s good for Boorowa.” And he was quietly glad the finals would not be played at Bungendore this year. He said, “There’s been enough finals at Bungendore for the last 5 years… There’s going to be no semis at Bungendore, so it’s nice that it’s over this way.”
The five years were not only about results. They were about people who had left their mark on the club. The recent passing of Jesse James, Luke Brown’s uncle and a long-time Hawks stalwart, hit hard. Hall had sat with him on his very first night at Harden, at a reunion, sharing a beer. There is a photo of the two of them. “It’s a sad loss for the club. He was a great man, and he will be remembered, and he is mentioned in our conversations as a team, and we do it for people like that, like him, like Quinny, those guys that we’ve lost in the last year or two. They left a big mark on that club. They will be remembered.” Barney Heywood passed just after Jesse. Another who had toiled away for decades for the club.
McIllhatton’s role as trainer carried its own weight. Head knocks and the growing awareness of CTE meant constant vigilance, especially with so much of the game now recorded. He took that responsibility seriously. This year Gary Lucas, father of Jacob and Corey, stepped in and proved a great help when Brendon Ford returned to the team-manager role. The arrangement worked. McIllhatton also strapped for the women’s team. “They are so much fun and they are there for the right reasons too, just to have some fun and with fun comes success and with success comes fun.” He named Polly, Jodie, the Doolans and Maryanne as brilliant people who made the club a good place to be.
The personal cost was real. For the first two years McIllhatton, his wife Brooke, and their boys did not come home on Saturdays. They slept in Harden. Brooke backed him no matter what. Their oldest son Thomas followed straight away. Jack finished his under-18s with the Pickers and then crossed over. The family trips to training and games were almost always with Hall. “He’s still a crap driver. He’s a scary driver. He’s never been any different.”
Yet the time was worth it. “We have had the best time over there. It has been so enjoyable. There’s no hidden agendas over there. There’s no committee members poking things… They gave Hally the job as a coach and they let him coach.”
Hall’s love of the game began early. He was throwing an oval ball around in his first year of school, aged about five. He never really thought about the moment he realised he could change a game. “I think probably in my first game, I thought I could get the ball and run over there and score a try. It’s just more of an obligation to feel like you can, so you do it, it’s your job rather than something I did.” Group 9, he said, is good footy. It is social. There is organisation. There is more money than there probably should be, yet that does not automatically create professional standards. Still, it is the competition he has worked in for the past five years, and he has treated it with respect.
Now he is stepping away. “There’s no plans. Absolutely clueless. I’m not being strategic about it, it is just that I need some space, I need a rest. It’s not that I’m tired of it and it’s not that I’m tired of the club, it is just that two years is a lot to coach a team, five years is a lot. The players need a new voice, I need new players, it’s just, you need a change,” he said.
He will do some family things. He is sick of hearing himself talk. He will coach again somewhere, just not next year. McIllhatton is less certain. If his son Jack stays at Harden, he might remain involved as a trainer. He does not want to commit fully, yet he does not want to refuse help if the club is short.
“We have had a great time over there and it will be sad to leave, but I’m sure that hopefully someone will pick it up and keep the success that the club’s had in the last five years for us, but over a long time, that they can keep it going,” he said.
The commitment required is large. Tuesday and Thursday training, a pre-season that starts early, the constant communications, the video work, the setup and the preparation. “There’s a lot of stuff… It’s not a hard thing, it is what I like doing, that’s why I’m doing it. I’m happy to do it. And I’ll do it again somewhere. Not next year.”
Five years of finals football. Three grand finals. An undefeated minor premiership. A club championship. A women’s side that also refused to lose. Players who followed a coach they trusted. A trainer who never missed the small details. A community that felt the club was in good hands. Nick Hall and Andrew McIllhatton did not arrive with a grand plan to reinvent the Harden Hawks. They simply showed up, worked, stayed calm, and kept the standards high. In doing so they transformed the club.
Hawks! Hawks! Hawks!
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