Tallon Smith

The Harden Hawks remain unbeaten through five rounds of the George Tooke Shield season after a come from behind 24-12 win over the Crookwell Green Devils at the Crookwell Memorial Oval on Saturday.

After taking a two point lead into the break, two second half tries to Jayden Cutting and Riley Manwaring secured a 12-point win for the Harden side in the rematch of last year’s elimination final.

The Hawks opened the scoring when fullback Jack Nicolls strolled over, before the Green Devils struck back, with Charlie Dawson fighting his way over to put the home side up 6-4.

That lead grew to 12-4 soon after, when a rampaging Cameron Herd ran a fantastic line on a last tackle shift to beat three defenders and slam the ball on the tryline.

However, the Hawks reclaimed the lead before the break with two quick tries in the form of an intercept to halfback Cutting and a crash play from lock Corey Lucas leaving the scoreline at 14-12.

That momentum continued on the other side of the break with Cutting getting his second as the Hawks dominated the field position battle.

In a desperate scramble to stay in the match, Crookwell continued to turn away wave after wave of Harden attack with solid goal line defence, but in the end it was to be the Hawks’ day, with the state’s current top tryscorer Manwaring racing in for his 12th four-pointer of the year to seal the result for the visitors.

Despite picking up a fourth win at Crookwell in the past four years, Harden coach Nick Hall said beating the Green Devils on their home ground still remains one of the toughest tasks in the competition.

“It’s the first thing I said to the boys in there, that coming to Crookwell and coming away with the two points is a hard thing to do,” he said. 

“I thought Crookwell were good, but I thought the field position game was won by us, and ultimately that gave us the points.”

After letting in two tries to fall behind in the first half, the Hawks dominated the second 40 minutes, scoring two tries and conceding none in a more controlled showing.

When asked about his half time address, Hall said that his message was focused on being calmer in attack and playing the field position game.

“I thought we were a bit frantic in attack, and I think that stayed in the second half but we executed a little bit better,” he said.

“We just talked about purely the field position game, they only scored two tries from five yards out, and [if] someone misses a tackle it’s easy to go five yards, so let’s just keep them at the other end of the field.”

Another highlight for the Hawks was Manwaring adding to his tryscoring tally, with the coach praising not only his attack, but his often underrated defence.

“We are very lucky to have Riley, we are very lucky to have a couple of guys like him who have good eyes for space and are nice and quick,” Hall said.

“He is a good tryscorer, but he is a bloody great defender too, and I don’t think people give him credit for that, he rarely gets beaten defensively.”

Hall was also impressed with the efforts of his forwards, who provided crucial go-forward for the side and held firm across the contest in defence for the most part.

“Our middles were all pretty good, when I look up, they scored two tries, but other than that we were defensively pretty good, and I thought all of our middles defensively were great,” he said.

“I thought big Holmesy [Matt Holmes] was really good.”

Next up for Harden is a clash with the competition’s other unbeaten side, North Canberra, at McLean Oval next Saturday.

Ahead of top of the table clashes in both the men’s and ladies’ league tag competitions, Hall said while he believes the Bears are the team to beat this season, the Hawks are looking forward to the challenge.

“I think they are the side to beat this year the way they are playing,” he said.

“I think it will be a good game next week, I think we will come ready to be in front of them, and they are coming ready to get us, so I think it will be a great game.”

Gray proud of Green Devils’ effort

Meanwhile on the other side of the ledger, although his side suffered its second loss of the season, Crookwell coach Brian Gray was proud of the effort the Green Devils showed against one of the competition’s top two sides.

“10 out of 10 for effort, we knew we had a big mountain to climb coming into today’s game,” he said.

“They are undefeated competition leaders, and have been doing it easy, so we really had to work hard and knuckle down.

“[I was] very happy with our performance, obviously disappointed we didn’t get the two points and finish the job off, but we will continue to work hard and build on that.”

One of Crookwell’s best on the day was edge forward Cameron Herd, whose barnstorming first half try highlighted a performance earned him the side’s three best and fairest votes.

Gray said Herd has only recently returned to the game, with the match being his first start of the year and unlikely to be his last after the impact he had on the game.

“Cameron Herd is a player on the rise, he played under 19s with us two years ago now, hasn’t played rugby league since, and came back a couple of weeks ago,” he said. 

“That was his first starting game today, and I don’t think it will be his last one by the way he got out there and took the game [on], he was very good for us.”

Finally, given that the Green Devils have lost to both Harden and North Canberra in the past few weeks, the question has naturally arisen as to whether they will be able to make the ground up in the remaining weeks of the regular season to challenge the top two teams come finals time.

“That’s a hard one, clearly we’re not where we need to be right now to compete with those two sides, they are well out in front,” Gray said. 

“I don’t like using the word rebuilding, but we have got some players that have just come back in the last few weeks, so we are just trying to find the best combinations for us.

“We have got nine or 10 weeks to improve and get better.”

Hawks take points in league tag

Earlier, the Hawkettes also took the points in the rematch of last season’s league tag decider with a 16-6 victory over the She Devils.

Harden opened the scoring through Georgia Smith, before Jayde Della hit back for Crookwell to level the scores at 6-all going into the break.

However, the Hawkettes ran in two second half tries through Taylah Wilson and Kate Menz to secure the win and maintain their unbeaten record like their men’s counterparts.

Looking around the George Tooke Shield as a whole, other men’s matches saw the Boorowa Rovers defeat Googong 68-4, North Canberra flex its muscle in a 106-0 win over UC Stars, and Bungendore score a 44-6 win over Snowy River.

League tag results saw Snowy River defeat Bungendore 18-8, North Canberra beat UC 28-0, and Boorowa take the points 44-4 over Googong.