Our Gold Coast Airport women’s team’s against-all-odds victory against four times premiers Burleigh Bears, before last weekend’s bye weekend, was certainly one of the most satisfying victories I have been associated with.
I am so proud of how the girls stuck to their task for the whole period of the game and hopefully the 22-18 win will give them the self-belief that they can beat anyone in the South-East Queensland division one competition.
As I’ve said previously, we’ve played some really good football in patches in our first three games but this time we added a whole new level of consistency to what we were doing. And, individually, the players stepped up as well.
We led 16-4 not long before half-time before the Bears scored a try to make it 16-8 going into the break. The Bears as expected came out strong in the second half and clawed their way back to lead 18-16 with five minutes remaining. Some great composure was shown when Tarryn Aiken forced a line drop out, and in the following set Shelley Fox managed to dot down between the posts.
Former Burleigh players Josina Singapu and Shelley Fox led from the front along with CJ Sims.
That gave Tarryn Aiken and Jessika Elliston plenty of opportunity to show their class and they had fine games.
Across the park everyone did their job against a team that was a lot bigger and play a hard, physical game.
Hopefully this will really build some self-belief in the girls. I believe in them and really admire their closeness and their work ethic, so I have always been confident they would improve as the season progresses.
Expectations will rise now but we are not going to change how we approach our footy.
It is all about small improvements each week and being consistent at training and in our matches. Results will take care of themselves if we focus on those two things.
I’ve been around footy for a while now and that win is right is right up there with the great moments I’ve had as a coach.
It was a local derby, against such a highly-celebrated team that had been unbeaten in their three games and few people gave us a chance. The win was one thing, but to see the look on the faces of the girls after they worked so hard and being almost surprised at what they had achieved was very special.
But what would be more pleasing is keeping it up from here. Continuing to build and improve, that’s the expectation our team has to have.
This week will prove another big test against a quality team in the Ipswich Brothers who have quality players across the park but we will prepare well and turn up ready to go.
Congratulations to Abbie Beecher, CJ Sims, Jessika Elliston, Serena Martin, Tarryn Aiken and Zara Canfield for being selected to attend the SEQ camp during the weekend and good luck in the selections.
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