The Harden Hawks have taken out the Peter Leitner Cup after downing the Coota Bulldogs 24 to 16 on Saturday afternoon under lights at McLean Oval.
Harden Coach Nick Hall was happy with the win which saw Harden claim the cup for the second consecutive year.
Hall said, “We had a plan and we played to our strengths. We are playing a different style which includes mobility, passing and speed. We stick together but generally we hustle and hassle opposition teams in defence and work together. Attacking wise, we have some speedy guys and the work around the rucks is good. We do that even more when Luke Brown is around. I’d say Coota thought they could probably win and so did we.”
Coota’s Ned Miller said, “Obviously very disappointing to go over there and not get the win. The Peter Leitner Cup added some extra motivation for our club, we were probably a little predictable in attack and didn’t quite throw enough at them early. We looked at a few things and came out in the second half and had a few more players in motion rather than throwing it out the back. We can’t fault our effort but the execution wasn’t quite there. We weren’t that disappointed with the way it finished. Harden played a little bit better than us. We put Chris Maher back into a running role which gave us another dimension with his running. It made a difference straight away.”
Ladies’ day will be held this Saturday at Coota and the U15s will be playing in between the League Tag and the First Grade game.
Ned said, “We hope some mums from the junior league and all the ladies will jump upstairs and enjoy the day.”
Harden were first to score through good work by Riley Manwaring and Lane Gaudie.
Austin powers was very good at the back.
Hall said “Both my halves did very well at getting us around the field.”
Drew Arabin was good both in attack and defence and has become the go to man for Harden’s go forward.
The Hawks muscled up in defence and made it difficult for Coota in attack who kept coming all game.
Coota Captain Coach Jordan Ballard had to take matters into his own hands on two occasions where he took the line on.
Ballard looks very good when he does this as he is as big as most second rowers in the comp, however, has the speed of a back.
The second Half saw Coota trailing 16-6, before Joe Ward went over in the right hand corner for Coota.
This made it 16-10. Drew Arabin charged over out wide in the left corner for Harden to make it 20-10.
Ballard went in to make it 20-14 for Coota with a successful conversion pulling up Coota’s scoring for the evening at 20-16.
A kick through with minutes to go saw Lane Gaudie perform some aerobatics for the Hawks to score a fine try and push the scoreline out to 24-16.
It looked like it could be anyone’s game until the last 5 minutes when Harden looked like they would hold on and they did.
Harden has a bye this week however, the Worhawks and the Hawkettes play before the club heads to Canberra the following week to take on Boomanulla.
The week off will allow a few niggling injuries to be overcome and the Hawks will be fresh for the their next match.
Coota will welcome the North Canberra Bears to Les Boyd Oval and will be going for a quick return to top form.
The Bears are a big, mobile and skilful side and they have a number of representative players.
