Sport
2 March, 2025
Confident Pride versus Tigers
WITH just one more week to go before the start of the Hostplus Cup, there’s confidence within Northern Pride after they dominated their last trial game against the Brothers last week 36-10.
Pride seems to be getting more and more comfortable in their own skin. In their first trial match against the PNG Hunters, they came close to victory 20-24, and in their second trial against the Brothers, now with a full team –including NQ Cowboys train-and-trial players – Pride really found their pace and went on to comfortably take the match 36-10.
Pride will now debut in the first round of the Hostplus Cup on Saturday, March 8 at Barlow Park against Brisbane Tigers.
Head coach Russ Aitken said the mentality remained the same, scores don’t matter, just quality of play.
“We’re feeling good. With trials out of the way we can look forward to round one. It’s a pretty exciting time for everyone,” he said.
“We’ve come through the trials relatively injury-free, so fingers crossed, we’ll go that way into round one.
“We got to use 25 boys, all of the boys that were at pre-season with the NQ Cowboys are back, it was great to have them back and we got to play everyone that was fit in out squad and that’s what trials are for, try out different combinations and doing our best to get our footy on as well.
“It was a great trial against Brothers, they’re the local premiers so it was a good hit out for both teams, and looking into round one not much changes, we’re just going to keep building our game around attack and defence, very team-based actions. We’ll work on individual areas and from a team point of view a lot of the non-negotiable footy areas we need to nail down early in the year and once we have that build out game.
“The Brisbane Tigers will be a strong team, we expect a tough challenge up here, we wouldn’t expect anything less, going into round one, everyone wants to put their best foot forward.
“We won’t be overly concerned about them, we’ll be looking to nail our footy and the rest will look after itself.”
Pride’s chief executive Garreth Smith commended the team on their trial win.
“Reflecting on the weekends trial against Brothers 36-10, it was a great hit-out for both teams,” he said. “Our first Hostplus Cup game is locked in for March 8 at Barlow Park against the Brisbane Tigers, with kick-off set for 5.30pm.”
