While our Harvey Norman Women’s and Tarsha Gale Cup teams enjoyed a bye round, our Harold Matthews and SG Ball squads endured another hot summer’s day of footy at Leichhardt Oval last Saturday. First up against fellow foundation club, Balmain Tigers, was our Harold Matts boys who knew they had a hard task ahead of them. The Tigers came out firing on all cylinders nabbing their first try of the game in the first five minutes and sending the Bears scrambling. The boys did well to keep their heads as the Tiger onslaught continued sending the big cats to the sheds up 42 – 6 in the first half. The team took the break time to regroup and put on a solid second half performance running in the next three tries. Young Bear, Blake Pasfield, took home a trifecta and neatly converted two out of three of his own tries. Hills Hawks junior, Ben Stringer, also got over the white line and again Pasfield converted. Tigers pushed the score out further with a late try, and unfortunately the Bears went down 46 – 22.

It was an absolute nailbiter in our SG Ball game against Balmain Tigers. Both sides defended well and our Bears kept the opposition to zero in the first half. Nabil Ali was the only try scorer in the first 35 minutes with Jack Kidd converting to take the boys to the sheds in the lead 6 – 0. Tigers brought the heat in the second half, dominating the first 10 minutes and pushing ahead on the scoreboard. Bears retaliated with a great team try that saw Thomas Peters add the four points for the red & black and Kidd again converted. Scores sat at 10 – 12 with the Bears ahead and ten minutes to go, but our hopes were shattered in the last minutes of the game when the Tigers managed to find the white line and convert the kick to take the win 16 – 12. Hold your head high boys, that was a solid performance against a strong side and shows how much you have grown as a squad. Bring the heat this week!

Finally, after a change in time our NSW Cup trial against Blacktown Workers Sea Eagles was pushed back to 7pm to help avoid the intense heat of the day. Our Bears were warmed up and eager to get an important hit out under our belts being only two weeks out from the comp start date. A summer storm rolled in and the game was initially delayed by 15 minutes. The murmur through the crowd was that the Sea Eagles weren’t keen to take on the Bears at all and finally called the game off due to lightning, without either of the teams taking to the field. Huge preparation opportunity lost for our boys and now we head into a massive week of training to make up for it. Our first game of the 2023 season is against the Panthers at BlueBet Stadium on Friday 3rd March.