Pride take lesson from rivals on simpler plan
THE Northern Pride will take a page out of the playbooks of their Intrust Super Cup rivals as they hunt their first premiership in six years.
Coach Ty Williams said the club would adopt a simpler style of play in 2020, at least for the opening rounds, after their predilection for expansive, throw-it-around footy yielded poor results in 2019.
The Pride are coming off their worst season in history, where they won just five of their 23 games to finish a disVALENTINE appointing 12th. Williams said the Pride would take a basic game plan into this Sunday’s first-round clash against Tweed Seagulls, with an idea to grind their way to a win.
“I think we’ve got to get comfortable first in doing those small things, like kicking to the corner and hopefully grinding teams down,” he said.
“You probably seen it firsthand three weeks ago when we played the Blackhawks. They don’t throw anything expansive at you but they just grind and grind and then when they get their opportunity, they take it.
“I think that’s clear cut – (that) if you want to be a topfour team that’s what you need to do. Burleigh did the same and won the competition.”
The coach said a focus for the young side over the preseason was sticking to a process and exercising patience.
“The key thing about that is, when you’ve got a young team they see so much and they want to react to it straight away,” he said.
“Over the first month, as I said the other day, we might be a bit clunky, or we might hit the ground running – we’re not too sure yet. But we’ll grow in confidence with the more games we play.”
Williams said the club had worked extremely hard over the past four months but, with the regular season having arrived, now was the time to keep things simple and straightforward.
“Everything we’ve worked on in the pre-season, we don’t want to throw it into one basket and go ‘oh, it’s not working’,” he said.
“I want the guys just to do the small things right, the effort areas that are required to win football games.”