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‘Nowhere to hide’: How ruthless Norths plan to derail Easts’ premiership party train
By Iain Payten
On a grand final day that promises to be emotional – and even history-making – for their rivals, Norths coach Zak Beer says his men will ignore the outside noise and trust in a cool, calm and calculated approach in the Shute Shield decider on Saturday.
For a second consecutive year, Norths Rugby club will be vying for the Shute Shield at Leichhardt Oval, and in a strange twist, it will also be the second consecutive year the Shoremen will face an opponent attempting to snap a long-standing premiership drought.
Minor premiers Easts earned their place in Saturday’s decider with a dramatic come-from-behind victory over Warringah at North Sydney Oval, courtesy of a match-winning try to Wallabies and NSW winger Darby Lancaster with just 12 seconds left on the clock.
It gives Easts the chance to end the club’s 55-year wait for a Shute Shield title, with the last win way back in 1969. Incredibly, the Woollahra-based club have a chance to win six premierships over the weekend, after making grand finals in all but one of the seven men’s grade and colts competitions.
Norths lost in a 17-15 thriller to Randwick in last year’s decider, allowing the Galloping Greens to break a 20-season drought. But the red-and-blacks dispatched Randwick clinically at the weekend, in the first of the back-to-back preliminary finals at North Sydney Oval.
Easts winger Darby Lancaster celebrates his match-winning try.Credit: Karen Watson/Sydney Rugby Union
Saturday provides a shot at redemption for Norths, who have been the most consistent team in the competition for several years but have not hoisted the trophy in that time. In 2021, they were second on the Shute Shield ladder when the season was called off, and after finishing minor premiers in 2022, Norths fell in the semi-finals.
But despite the availability of emotional fuel to counter the wave coming their way from the east, Beer said his side will stick with their formula and trust in the experience of a settled team, which contains NSW veteran Hugh Sinclair and young guns Max Burey and Henry O’Donnell, but far fewer contracted professionals than Easts.
“You can’t go back and put our name on the ’23 Shield, that’s done and Randwick got that one,” Beer said.
“Our big focus this year, and our theme, is process – week-in, week-out. Cohesion and experience pay off in these sorts of games. But also winning moments.
“We won moments in last year’s grand final, but we didn’t win enough of the key ones. And I think that’s something we have been doing this season, heading into this year’s game. And I think with our draw, the conditioning we have had in the last couple of weeks in some very tough matches has been a big positive.”
Luke Gersekowski looks to pass at North Sydney Oval.Credit: Karen Watson/Sydney Rugby Union
In beating Manly, Warringah and Randwick in the last three weeks, Norths have looked outstanding – but they’ll go into the decider as underdogs against a Waratahs-laden Easts side. And that’s just the way Beer likes it.
Talk of avenging last year’s loss, and Easts chasing history, is “all outside noise, from outside the four lines”.
“But there’s nowhere to hide when you’re inside the four lines,” Beer said. One thing about this group, and how they’ve been performing at such a consistently high level over the last couple of years, is because we control that process. The emotion of the game, and the atmosphere and the enormity of the occasion, lifts the guys anyway.”
“Whether it is eight years for us [since Norths’ last Shute Shield win in 2016] or 55 years, it is not going to give you any more desire to win the game. If it does, that weight of expectation that players take on field with them, in a game like this, it can squeeze pressure onto players, with the burden of breaking a drought like that.”
Beer paid credit to his rival Easts coach Ben Batger, and the success of the wider Easts club.
“Ben has done a brilliant job in recruiting the team he has this year, and putting that team together,” Beer said.
“I felt for the Rats, because that could have gone either way, that game, and there were a couple of moments at the end of that game that I am sure both teams will be reviewing hard. That was a toss of a coin prelim.”