Derrick Hay in Stride. PC Cat Butler Photography.
The Gundagai Tigers have been making the most of their soft middle season schedule, easing past what most would call inferior competition over the past few weeks. The Tigers seem to be the main threat to the unbeaten Wagga Kangaroos, with teams like Young and Temora having bad losses on their CV early in the season.
Coach Aaron Gorrell expects his team to continue their run of form, “We’ll have to be at our best, they have been unlucky with a few games this year, so we won’t be heading into it and taking them lightly. Most sides can beat whoever on their day. We’re going to have to be good. It’s probably the closest full-strength side we’ve had all year, so I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do with that, but we’ll work hard this week and I’m sure we’ll be ready on game day.”
“I think it’s an exciting competition. We are not taking anything for granted. We’ve still got a long way to go to get to where we want to be. We’ve got a couple of tough weeks coming up, and we need to make sure we can beat and get the two points so then we roll back into the top five teams. If you don’t turn up on a day that is what can happen. You have got to make sure that you prepare right. You don’t take any game for granted. We will make sure we don’t fall into that trap.”
“They have got some quality players there, so we know we are going to have to be at our best and we know we have to keep improving each week to get where we want to be at the end of the year. In games like these, you have got to make sure you beat everybody that’s below you on the table, and we don’t take any game on lightly as it a turnover pretty quickly. We will make sure we are as prepared as we can and you have to prepare for those sides as you do for the teams above you and make sure we tick every box.”
“We had Epa missing, we had Hayden Ashcroft missing, we had Pat Birch missing. In the last three weeks, we have got four or five back into our side which helps both grades. We’ve only been playing 16, so there’s a spot there. We’ll decide who is going to fill that spot. Everybody we have used throughout the whole season I’m confident could step up when needed or put pressure on blokes that are playing First Grade at the moment. As a Club that’s what you need to be successful. If you haven’t got pressure coming from Reserve Grade you are in for a tough season.”
“We are at that stage where we have got blokes pushing for spots which is healthy for the Club. We’ve had recent standouts like Toby Dasey. He’s been good. Even since the start of the year, he’s improved as a player and just with his confidence as well. I think he will get better and better with each game and with the pace he’s got you can’t coach that. He’s pretty quick, so it’s nice to have someone that can score a try from nothing and I think he’s only going to improve throughout the year. I think the majority of our senior players, Will Herring, Derek Hay, Joel Fields, they’ve all stepped up, they’re all leaders of the club and they kept the standards for everyone else to follow and also take pressure off me by driving those standards. So it’s always nice to have some player-driven standards, and other voices instead of mine week in and week out that they get sick of. It has been good so far, but yeah, we’ve still got a long way to go.”
“There were no low expectations. Last year was the first year I’ve ever coached and not made the semi-finals, so I still expected to go better, but it’s a little bit hard when you’ve got blokes playing three grades sometimes on the same day. It makes it hard for the whole club. I came to Gundy with high expectations and I knew the squad we had and what we could do with it. We would expect to go deep inside the finals and I think we can win with what we’ve got, but we are still a long way off from where we want to be.”
Elsewhere in Group 9, the Cootamundra Bulldogs will travel to Junee to play a look Diesels side, the Young Cherrypickers travel to Wagga for a Grand Final rematch against the Kangaroos, Tumut hosts the Wagga Brothers and Temora will hope to build off their impressive win against Young when they host Albury.
Group 9 Ladder.
1. Wagga Kangaroos, 14pts, 238.
2. Temora Dragons, 10pts, 118.
3. Gundagai Tigers, 10pts, 72.
4. Tumut Blues, 9pts, -26.
5. Young Cherrypickers, 8pts, 124.
6. Albury Thunder, 7pts, 52.
7. South City Bulls, 4pts, -62.
8. Cootamundra Bulldogs, 4pts, -74.
9. Junee Diesels, 4pts, -84.
10. Wagga Brothers, 0pts, -358.
-Tully Potts