Half back and Line out jumper on Saturday was the forever busy Jim Honner. John Ryan is in the background.
The Harden Red Devils played host to the second placed Taralga side on Saturday at Robert’s Park. The win has now seen Taralga take top place on the ladder. The Red men were defeated 38-5 in a very physical encounter, however the scoreline wasn’t a reflection of the match. The Devils were under pressure early and had to defend for the first 20 minutes. Taralga hadn’t come up against a side as physical as the Devils this season. Several of their players actually thanked the Harden side for a tough game before they face Bungendore this weekend. Taralga went into the break up 28 nil. Harden showed glimpses of what they can do in the future, however lack of possession took its toll. If we had a statistician on Saturday it would have probably shown a time in possession of 20 to 80 percent in favour of the men from Taralga. Harden didn’t give up and it showed in the tackles with plenty of effort on display.
Toby Hayden escaped the bin after pulling his opposition jumper down in the line out. Unfortunately, Big Bad Bustling Ben Brady was given his marching orders and a ten minute rest after the ref confused him with Hayden. Harden kicked off near the end of the first half with Ben Corkhill having an immediate effect, laying out a Taralga player with a beautiful hard tackle across the chest. This seemed to fire the boys up again in both attack and defence. Kyle Murray slotted in to the Five Eigth role nicely for the match and fed his Centres Zac Allen and Alex Pirie some quality ball. Although both gentlemen had a number of breaks the sliding Taralga defence accounted for them to leave the Devils scoreless at this point.
Jesse Redmond played well with the number 15 on his back and ran and kicked the ball at ease. Jim Honner slotted in at half back and jumped in the line outs while the team awaited the return of John Manchester, who suffered a concussion against Milton the previous week. Marcus Ashton played more minutes at prop than he wanted to, but the big fella always provides plenty of size and strength when he comes onto the field. Zak Leitner made use of his steer wrestling skills and added some bite from the back row. Supporters must have thought the clock was turned back when Benjamin Berrigan Irving Esquire took to the field. Mr Irving played plenty of Rugby at fullback during his younger days and still possesses a massive boot, however he played a great 30 minutes of football in the back row tackling his younger opponents with ease. The second half started like the first and the Devils had Taralga on their own line with a penalty going the way of the red men. By this stage, the bench was looking a bit bare and a couple more substitutions were made. Matt Stadtmiller crashed over to post Harden’s only points for the match, however wished he wasn’t on the field at all.
The Devils had 5 players at training on Tuesday night last week before the numbers boosted to around 15 for the Thursday session. Numbers are poor and fitness needs to improve. With a little more polish and some fitter players, the Devils would have gone a lot closer to beating a Grand Final contending side in their first year back in a competition which boasts 11 sides. Captain Clint Stevens made it clear that if players don’t train Tuesday and don’t have a bloody good excuse, they will be doing plenty of laps Thursday or not be picked for the weekend. He said, “It’s time we got serious. There is a good group of boys here and we aren’t doing the right thing by each other if we don’t start having a real go.” Harden will head to Yass this Saturday to take on the Rams at 2:30 pm at Victoria Park. Yass are coming off a 83-0 thrashing by Taralga 2 weeks ago before going down to Jindabyne 41-19 on the weekend. Harden accounted for Yass in a trial before the season commenced and will need to win this match to stay in fourth position on the ladder.
