Recap

Reds still on top with room for improvement

By CHRIS GORDON

The Goulburn Workers Club Dirty Reds notched up their seventh straight win on the frequently difficult Cooma away game, but despite the size of the win (54-12) it was a long way from the side’s best performance of the year.

“It sounds arrogant to say it, but I know we can play a lot better, last week and this week,” said first grade coach Ben Pearson.

“It’s always tough coming to Cooma to play, but we’ve got a lot more that we can put on the park. I don’t think we’ve really been able to get back to the standard we were at against RMC and we’re playing down to our opposition. I hope that doesn’t bite us when we come up against stronger opposition.

The Reds put a lot of points on the board, and denied Cooma many scoring opportunities, but the performance was a bit of a curate’s egg – good in parts. Individually, the efforts were there but it was messy didn’t come together as a whole.

Where in other matches, Goulburn’s structure, handling and defence has intimated opponents, the Reds didn’t maintain that same sense of dominance throughout and had to keep re-earning it

Having said that, it was still a win and a sizeable one at that. Goulburn had four tries and 26 points on the board at half-time and never looked in danger of a loss. There were quite a lot of strong individual efforts and performances, it was more a case of the elements not coming together.

The players agreed with Pearson at the break that there was a lot of work to be done on ball handling, defence and cohesion as a whole and urged the side to keep to basics.

Goulburn scored five second half tries but Cooma, to their credit, disregarded the competition ladder and restricted Goulburn’s ability to get on a roll and build up momentum.

Hamish McCormack scored two tries in the match and Matt Spratley, who had scored three tries in the preceeding second grade game, added another in firsts to make it four tries for the weekend.

After a bunch of games on the road, the Reds return to Poidevin Oval next weekend to take on the formidable Defence Academy.

“We’ve got ADFA next week, Hall the week after that and we’ve still got Gungahlin to meet and they’ve got good form,” said coach Pearson.

“I hope we can get up for the big games and get some structure back.”

Best and fairest points went to Ben Cheetham (3), Michael McKillop (2), Alec Palmer (1) and Mik Webber 1.

Goulburn 54 (Hamish McCormack 2, Henry Cooper, Michael McKillop, Jackson Reardon, Matt Spratley, Alec Palmer, Jordan Lees tries, Mik Webber7 conversions) bt Cooma 14 (Mathew Cusbert, Daniel Hopkin tries, Damien Roach conversion).