FIVE THINGS WE LEARNED: PRIDE V SEAGULLS

1PICK AND STICK Pride coach Ty Williams has to bite the bullet and stick with the Jake Clifford and Brayden Torpy combination in the halves. The Clifford-Torpy alliance took a while to get going, but looks the most promising of the Pride’s six different halves combinations in 11 games this season. It’s not a winning formula just yet, but they deserve another outing against Easts next week.

2BIG CALL HURTS PRIDE Four minutes before the break, with the Pride down 8-0, hooker Connor Jones darted out of dummy-half and found himself in open space. The Pride looked a big chance to score and narrow the deficit, but a penalty against Javid Bowen, who was deemed to have held back a Seagulls defender, flipped momentum completely. Tweed scored on the ensuing set, in what was a game-changing 12point turnaround.

3MURPHY’S STATEMENT Jack Murphy hadn’t played at fullback for the Pride since their big loss to Sunshine Coast on April 6, but the 27-year-old Englishman made a statement with the footy in hand in his return to the Queensland Cup. Murphy was fearless in his kick returns, running for 128 total run metres, and had success creating the overlap, despite the Pride’s inability to finish.

4CAN’T STOP HOLA We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again — Peter Hola is going to be a superstar. The boom backrower ran a great line to power his way over in the 72nd minute for his first try in Pride colours on Saturday. But it was the numbers he racked up in the middle that stood out again — 189 all run metres, 78 postcontact metres, three tackle breaks, two offloads and one line break for the 110kg, 192cm young buck.

5CLIFFO ON THE UP The young Cowboys half is getting closer to returning to the form which saw him make his NRL debut as a 20-year-old last year. Clifford managed to score a try off some good support play late in the game, while also putting his name to a try assist, a line break, a line break assist and three tackle breaks. What let him down was tackling at 43 per cent efficiency, with six missed and two ineffective tackles from 14 attempts.