The Grizzlies against Harden this year.

On a cold, windy early Autumn’s afternoon, following on from a thick fog that morning, the Harden Hawks were riding high on the Competition Table and looked set on McLean Oval to take on the Canberra UNI blue yellow and white Grizzlies, with only one win so far this season and second last on the George Tooke Table.

From all reports our local side were set and ready to go. Particularly with a strong victory the previous week against Bungendore.

The Hawks kicked off and UNI brought the ball back, capping it  off with a 40/20. They attacked and surprised Harden scoring out wide. 4-0.

Harden seemed to start sleepishly. And it was then that the wheels fell off the Hawks. They squandered possession on numerous occasions and this allowed UNI’s big Front Rower to charge over and make it 10 nil to UNI.

Dare I say it, but the Hawks looked more like lame ducks, when Uni touched down making the tally UNI 14 Harden 0.

Finally Harden received a penalty, but ran out of tackles with the ball.

Then with just a few minutes until half time a HAWKS FORWARD was

sin-binned. And almost immediately the UNI boys scored again, 20-0 at the Interval.

The Harden Hawks obviously had a big deficit to make up in the second half. But the rot had still set in when the Grizzlies scored again at the blink of an eye. And led 24-0.

The story of the match was simply Harden were making a lot of mistakes and the UNI were capitalising on them.  Actually UNI were playing very well to make matters worse.

With 15 minutes remaining the Hawks began getting a bit more possession.  UNI dropped the ball and Jakob Halls swooped on to it to give the Hawks their first points. Harden began to come out of their slumber when Hamish Bradford scored number two and the score closed slightly at UNI 24 Hawks 12.

But time was against a comeback by Harden, although they still had a never say die attitude. A further try by the Hawks brought the score to 24-18.

Then in the impending gloom Ryan Daley scored for Harden making it UNI 24 Harden 22. They declined to take the conversion hoping for a try after the UNI kickoff. However, the siren beat them and the UNI Students had gone to the top of the class by 25 points to Harden’s 22.

With 2 rounds to go, the TABLE reads: Bears 28, Bungendore 26, Harden 24, Boorowa 22, Binalong 20 and Crookwell 18……

Harden play CROOKWELL this Saturday at McLean Oval, @ 3-30, where a win is vital for the Finals.

                                                                                                                WINGS.