Despite failing to advance Aaron Hertsch’s Dragons to the Jersey Flegg Cup finals despite a mid-season run of five victories in six games, the rookie head coach was proud of the resilience and development displayed by his team throughout season.
The under-21s team, which was just 24 for-and-against points off of the top five with five rounds left when the year ended on a losing run, was cruelly hurt by a number of injuries and squad call-ups.
Hertsch insists that despite missing the postseason in his first season in charge, there were a number of positives to be taken away from the season.
“A positive was that we debuted a lot of kids out of SG Ball, and we debuted a kid out of Harold Matts as well,” Hertsch remarked.
Just seeing the players improve was enjoyable. They were all eager to put in a lot of effort, so perhaps next year we’ll do a little bit better, play in finals, and see some results as well as growth.
“We had a fairly young squad towards the end of the year, which caused us to drop a little lower than we expected, but that’s going to lead us into next year quite strong,” the team said.
Many of the team’s regulars were either unavailable or received promotions to Knock On Effect NSW Cup level towards the conclusion of the year due to a club-wide injury problem.
By the end of the year, there were practically 20 members of his team who were unavailable, he added. “By the end of the year, we had 13 unavailable and I think we had about six or seven playing Cup.”
“I believe there were 41 members of the team, and we used them all. Each person had a run.
Hertsch is aware of the wider picture and the significance of growth at this point in the players’ careers, even though the promotion of players up a grade created a harder position at Jersey Flegg level.
Overall, he remarked, “I believe we would have had at least 13 Flegg Cup debuts, and they all held their own very well.
“If you look at it that way, the outcome was fantastic. With those youngsters going through, it goes without saying that the more experience they gain, the better they’ll be and hopefully succeed in getting into first grade.
“If you’ve got competition there through the spots and through the whole grade, it makes the whole club stronger.”
“I was astonished by how many rose, but once more, I believe it was caused by several injuries… NRL losing players from the team and injuries caused the Cup players to rise, which is excellent since it gave our guys good experience and exposure, which will only make them stronger and better players.
The team’s push for the finals reached its pinnacle in July with a victory against the Storm in Corrimal, closing off a stretch of five victories in six games.
We were in the air. That was a good few weeks after the SG Ball men had blended with us. It took us a few weeks to convince everyone of our goals, but once they did, we put together the greatest team possible, which produced the po
“We travelled to Canberra and defeated it, we travelled to Melbourne and defeated it, we quickly returned to Cronulla to defeat the Sharks, and we also defeated the Panthers at home.
We kind of began our run from there, but obviously we ran into those injuries, and I believe we needed to win two of the final four games, but we ended up losing all four. We undoubtedly had more little children than I anticipated, since there were certainly many of them.
You could notice the difference between guys who were 19 and 21 years old since we faced some fairly elite teams that lowered their players back as well.
sitive outcomes, the man added.
Ben Johnson won the team’s Player of the Year Award but wasn’t the only player who attracted the coach’s attention throughout the season. Johnson made his Knock On Effect NSW Cup debut in Round 9 and went on to make two more appearances later in the year.
“I believed Campbell Watchirs had a successful year. For much of the year, he was quite reliable. We spent a lot of time improving his game. He began the year in the back row, but I later moved him back into the middle, according to Hertsch.
