The Force is growing stronger

Photo: Brad Greenshields

A LOOK at the overall results from the Northern NSW Championships shows the North Coast Force is gaining in strength.

Finishing in third position in the battle for the Simon Smyth Cup was a commendable effort but a further drill down into the results shows how well the North Coast teams performed.

If wins and losses for the boys was the only measurement taken for the championships, then the Force would’ve finished in second position.

Both the 13 Boys and 15 Boys teams for the Force won four of their six matches while the 17 Boys won half of their matches played.

These results placed the overall Boys program behind Hunter Country but ahead of Hunter Metro, Central Coast and Illawarra.

The strong result was noted by Matt Anderson, Force Coaching Co-ordinator.

“When you look at how strongly we performed across the championships, maybe it’s time we stopped thinking of the AFL North Coast as a small competition,” Anderson said.

“This week has shown it’s now time to believe that we can mix it with competitions with big reputations like the Hunter.”

The results for the 13 Girls and 17 Girls weren’t as strong as what the boys produced but there were good signs for the fledgling program according to Development Lead and coach of the 17 Girls Matt Crawley.

“The 13 Girls team is in its first year and a lot of players have only just started playing this year yet they won two of their six matches which is a fantastic result,” Crawley said.

“The Force didn’t have a 15 Girls team this year so the 17 Girls team had a share of 14 and 15 year-old players going up against older and more experienced players from the Hunter and they held their own. I think it’s an exciting sign for the future that they performed as well as they did.”