The Richmond Premiers finally have got the monkey off its back and have secured its first win of the 2014 Fox Memorial Shield Competition. Solid performance from each team member who are finally playing to the teams potential. Strong performance noticeably from winger David Dyer, opening try scorer Andrew Kake and the front rowers who laid the platform for the team.
It was clear that new head coach Bernie Perenara, now in to week three of the Premier team role has addressed the backs out-wide defence. The huge improvement proved a vastly different side with no tries being scored out wide.
The forward pack was on top form dominating from the get go. Lead strongly by Hector Purcell, Stewart Preuss, Jonah Sofele and Logan Wright up front the enormous effort to gain metres at will with a quick succession substitution system helped keep the momentum in the home teams favor.
The skillful second rowers caused a lot of headaches for the visiting Hawks as Siliga Kepaoa, Ben Seve and opening game try scorer Andrew Kake were causing havoc on the fringes. Off load options and support in numbers allowed for half break opportunities. Defensively the back row were kept busy as they contained Mangere’s big boys and outside backs. The hunger for defence is back!
The space created allowed for the outside backs to finish off tries. Something proven difficult in round one. Apart from the one handling error in the first half from winger David Dyer who went on to make amends by scoring a hatrick in the second half, the team were solid.
The Premier team would like to acknowledge the strong start to the very loud and vocal Richmond crowd. Hooker John Mana said “I felt it (the Richmond crowd) helped me out when I was tiring towards the back end of the first half and early second half. The crowd played a big part in our win.” It was a good team effort from the whole team and management especially with everyone doing their roles and more when it was needed. "The boys kept digging in and stuck in the grind together and when things were going tough we just played as a team", says John Mana.