Matthew Stewart and Luke Brown carrying a truck tyre on to McLean Oval after nearly 40 minutes of hard work. The Hawks were put through their paces on Saturday in preparation for this week’s Semi Finals against the Bungendore Tigers Club. Both our men and ladies will be vying for a home Grand Final.
The Harden Hawks and Hawkettes will face a tough test in their Semi Final in Bungendore this Saturday, when they take on the Tigers and Tigerettes for a home Grand Final. Bungendore won the George Tooke Minor Premiership after defeating Boomanulla 26-12 last weekend, and have proven to be the principal nemesis in the George Tooke Shield for Harden, with the Hawks going down to the side a fortnight ago. With the home ground advantage yet again, defeating Bungendore will be a tough task.
The competition minor premiership was won by Bungendore who managed to steal it from the Hawks with a better for and against on just 2 points. “Obviously Bungendore is going to be tough down there,” said Harden Hawks President and Hawkettes Coach, Jason Pollard. “But hopefully we can knock them off and hold a home Grand Final.” The last match up between the two sides was marred by poor ball handling on the Hawks’ part, resulting in a close loss to the Tigers 14 to 10.
Several chances were missed with players dropping the ball after breaking the defensive line or dropped balls occuring when passes were forced. “We are going to need to defend really well over the next couple of weeks,” said Harden Hawks Coach, Michael Quinn. “But we need to learn to execute a bit better, finish our plays off and we’ll be fine.” “[Bungendore] do the basics very well. They don’t make many mistakes, and they defend very well. They come in and close off really quickly, and they get up in your face. So we’re just going to need to execute our game plan really well, which is all we can do,” he added. On the other hand, the Hawkettes have taken out the Minor Premiership convincingly, finishing on 24 competition points with 19 for the second placed Bungendore Tigerettes.
The Hawkettes have proven to be a dominant force in the League Tag competition, and defeated the Tigerettes in their last match up 20 to 10. “Their defence has been the best in the comp all year,” said Jason. “They’ve been holding sides to probably one or two tries per game, and if we can keep doing that for the rest of the season, I think we’ll be fine, because we have the points in us. Hopefully we can win two more games and that will do it.”
The Hawkettes will take on the Tigerettes at 12:30 pm in Bungendore at Mick Sherd Oval at the conclusion of the other Semi-Final clash between the Yass Girlpies v Crookwell She Devils. The Hawks kick off against the Tigers at 3:00 pm following the 1:30 pm clash between the Yass Magpies and the Crookwell Green Devils.
