Nick Hall makes a text book tackle for the Hawks as Alex Slavin prepares to take care of the top half.
The Harden Hawks travelled to Binalong on Saturday to take on the Brahmans in the preliminary finals and the Times caught up with Nick Hall, coach of the Hawks. Binalong attempted to target Hall on a couple of occasions however, it didn’t turn out the way the crowd thought.
“The good thing about me playing is I’m a good target. They come for me. Everyone loves to whack the old fella as he has a bit of a name and he’s 49, so pretty vulnerable right now, let’s go bash him, what’s he doing out there. And you know what, if I saw an old bloke out there, I would have gone for him too. “It’s not a place for the old fellas, it’s a place for the young fellas. When I was 23 if you had of run at me I would have given you a hard day.
Harden went up on the scoreboard pretty quickly and stunned the Brahmans.
“Pretty consistently. There was periods of us defending in a line. But this time of year everyone is playing a field position game and that is Binalong’s game, they are really good at playing a field position game.
“I think all the points they have scored against us in the last few games, they beat us last game, they scored a try from one metre out; they scored a shaped try where they did shift the ball from the right to the left, but basically played the ball two metres out from the line and shifted it all the way to the left, it was a nice play and scored in the left corner and a winger made a mistake and jammed on that occasion and then the tries they scored on the weekend were the same. Three tries from a couple of metres out. They are scoring field position tries. They are getting up there, waiting on mistakes and errors and then weight of possession and pressure is scoring tries.
“They can score tries from anywhere, but the majority of their tries are coming from field positions and we just had to play the field position game with them which isn’t our best game.
“We throw the ball around and we do score some tries from our end of the field which we did on the weekend, but with that comes some risk. We turn the ball over sometimes. Sometimes we give them opportunities, we chuck the ball around. That is a coach’s nightmare sometimes too. That is our style of footy and sometimes as the coach you have to embrace some risk and give the guys room to make some mistakes.
“It’s hard to handle when Harden stick it together and some days they drop it a lot and make it really easy for you, but that is our risk/reward game.
“Jack Nicolls was a standout. It’s his first year with us. He’s a good Young boy. He’s a good fella and been in the Young system for a long time and been in some pretty talented sides. He’s also a guy that has played everywhere. He’s traditionally been a half, could play hooker, outside backs. He’s matured physically, grown a bit this year. He’s still young enough that growth is a factor in his game. He’s quite an athlete. He’s very fast and fit. Stripped down he doesn’t have much fat on his bones, he’s got that young man’s greyhound body, he’s just all muscle and ribs and he’s very fast.
“As you saw on the weekend, the ball bounces for him, he’s got great instincts, he’s got great hand/eye and you put him into some space and he knows how to run. He got around the fullback a few times on the weekend.
“We made a couple of adjustments and had a few different plans for different scenarios and they worked for us this week. “You go at halves all the time and their tactics would have been to spot our halves too. Halves sit in a spot that is fairly identifiable, they have a fairly structured role defensively and good halves are important there because they make reads, they are good communicators. Rawlo and those guys are great in attack, but they are also great in defence. He connects and guides their defence on that side and talks about it and identifies threats and you see quite often he shoots out and makes pretty good reads on potential threats. They rep that at training a lot, defensively. You think people just practice attack but they are practising their defence and they know what they are doing, they are really organised. I would say they are nearly the most connected defence in the comp.
“The changes they made in offence helped them as well last time, so we just made a few adjustments and some of them worked and some of them didn’t. Some things they just beat you at. They are just good. They are a competitive side. “Our fullbacks started well. We started our sets really well, but it could be total opposite next time.
“I thought all our guys were good. Our halves were attacking, we kicked well this week compared to last week where we didn’t, our back five were better, we weren’t very good at bringing the ball back last time, we let the ball go over our heads, we weren’t energetic going back to get it, this week we were and we talked about it all week and talked about it in the warm up. The back five were ready to go and they were good.
“The conditions on the day, it was a hot day for both sides. They are a bigger more physical side and they are a really aggressive, defensive side and it took a bit of sting out them a little bit and they worked so hard defensively they might have lacked a little bit in offence, they struggled a little bit.
“Week one of semis is hard. It gets hot and everyone is puffed, everyone is playing hard and you just knock up and both sides felt it on the weekend.
“It’s just competing, and we just have to be in front of them and pay attention to little things. Just compete and don’t give it away and make it easy, which is a challenge as we want to play our footy and don’t want to roll over and give them the ball in a bad position because they are too good a side.
“If you keep giving Coota, Binalong or Bungendore chances on the line, don’t worry about good fancy tries, they will just barge over you. They are so good, strong and consistent, they will get you.”
HAWKETTES Looking To Jump in to Big Dance
Our amazing Twin Town ‘Twinnies’ will be back for Harden today after representing the Australian 27 and over side, who went undefeated a fortnight ago.
The all conquering Harden Hawkettes were defeated a fortnight ago at the hands of Crookwell. Put simply don’t expect that to happen again this weekend, although it is always a possibility. They will put up a hell of a fight against a Coota Bullettes side desperate to go one better in 2024.
Coach Jason Pollard said, “We are looking to get players back this weekend and everyone’s over their injuries, so we should be ready to go close to full strength for the first time all year.
“We’ve done some hard yards the last three or four nights. It’s been pretty hard on the girls, but they’ve all been there and last night (Tuesday) was as good as we’ve trained all year.
“We are looking forward to having everyone playing, having a good time and injury free.
“It’s been a very disrupted year. I’ve never seen so many injuries in League Tag for the majority of the season.
“We look forward to the challenge and we will be up for it.
“If we are unlucky enough to lose, we will play the winner of Binalong and Crookwell.
“We are looking forward to the weekend and going to Bungendore in both grades.
“Grace Smith will also be back as well, so that will be good. Jade and Jazzy are back as well.
“The only one that is under the injury cloud is young Charlene, she hurt herself playing rugby on Sunday.
“The girls have done a lot of work at training and on fitness and they should be ready to go and make up from missing the game at the weekend.
When asked about the Crookwell loss Pollard said, “We were pleased with the way we played down there. We came away pretty ecstatic. We don’t like to lose, but were beaten on the day and we certainly took a lot out of that.
Kick off is 1pm for the girls and 2.30pm for the men.
