In the immediate aftermath of the Cowra Magpies’ Group 10 loss to the Bathurst Panthers in last year’s Group 10 Premiership decider, Cowra’s president, Marc McLeish, said he had two words on his mind.
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“Unfinished business.
“We know we had the team to win that competition.”
A heart-pounding, nerve-severing 12-10 defeat, McLeish said there is a sense of knowing within the club about what transpired, which has fuelled the club to slightly adjust its approach over the off-season in a bid to go one better in Group 10 during 2019.
Yet Steve Sutton and Kurt Hancock, 2018 and 2019’s respective senior men’s coaches, both remain philosophical about the game.
“I was disappointed for the players, but the biggest thing out of that was we had all the running and momentum for the first half an hour, and then after that, for 50 minutes, it was all Panthers,” Hancock reflects.
We know we had the team to win that competition
- Cowra President Marc McLeish on last year's Group 10 Grand Final
“We had a couple of other opportunities [after that 30 minutes] inside their 20, but weren’t able to capitalise,” Sutton observed.
“In big game you’re not gonna get a lot of opportunities, so you’ve got to make the most of them.”
However, with the side’s backs against the wall for more than half the match, the ability to grind and almost secure an unlikely victory left both coaches in awe of their team’s spirit.
“It was any other team, they would’ve been beaten by 30 points with the amount of ball the Panthers had in that second half,” Sutton said.
“Our guys just kept turning up and turning up, putting their bodies on the line. We were only three or four minutes away from what would’ve been one of the bravest Group 10 wins in a long, long time.”
“The effort was massive, even in the half-time [break], I probably thought we were a little bit gassed, but to be able to hang in there, was enormous,” Hancock added.
“I thought that was one of the best efforts I’ve seen from a footy side as a coach, and especially as a defensive unit within that team.”
While Cowra left that day, and the season, with no shortage of admirers following their resurgent year, it was easy to forget that less than 12 months earlier there was a strong possibility of the club folding.
“It doesn’t matter what you’ve got, if you’ve got money in the bank or players on the paddock, if you haven’t got a committee, you haven’t got a club,” said McLeish, summarising the club’s issues at the time.
While McLeish’s predecessor, Bill Brien, had left the club in “decent shape financially,” a paucity of helpers left the club with large recruiting and coaching gaps ahead of the 2018 season.
Former secretary Wayne Browne contacted McLeish to see if he would be interested in filling the role, and while he quickly agreed after speaking to his wife, there was one other person that McLeish spoke to.
“My goal was to surround myself with people that know what they’re doing, so Steve Sutton was my first call, before I took the job on,” he said.
Browne had initially approached Sutton about coaching the side in September 2017, but Sutton was unable to commit at that point in time.
“There was a chance that I might’ve been moving with my job,” Sutton explained.
But then that fell through, and once McLeish – a former Cowra player – called, Sutton, a long-time local who has played and coached for the Magpies previously, got involved.
With the club subsequently scrambling to recruit players throughout December, Sutton and McLeish moved quickly to secure players with Sutton’s connections proving crucial in securing players like Benjamin John and Jeremy Gordon.
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“I coached Jeremy when he was in Under 18s at Bathurst and we’ve kept in touch ever since then,” Sutton said.
“Once we got those couple of names, it brought some of the locals out of the woodwork as well… People want to play with him.”
Sutton said McLeish was integral with what he brought to the recruiting process, given the difficult position they started in.
“When Marc was president, and I came on as coach, and there was an opportunity to sign a player of the calibre of Jeremy [Gordon], then I knew Marc would move heaven and earth to get it across the line,” Sutton said.
McLeish was also responsible is bringing the coach responsible for Magpies’ 2014 Grand Final loss, Kurt Hancock, into the fold of the club.
“Kurt’s a wonderfully experienced coach,” McLeish said.
“[I wanted to] get someone … to come in and basically give us an analysis from an outsider looking in on the attitude towards Cowra, how teams prepare for us and… how did St. Pats beat us on that day [in 2014].”
While Hancock was dealing with Under 16s West Division representative footy, he was quick to come on board once his commitments were completed, and quickly established a rapport with Sutton’s coaching team.
“He’s very knowledgeable, he’s very passionate about his rugby league and whenever he runs a session it’s always first class,” Sutton said.
With a team assembled mixing gun players with locally-bred talent, led by an experienced coaching panel, the Magpies had every reason to be quietly confident coming into 2018, and while the Grand Final result was perhaps unexpected, McLeish said he was always bullish about the competitiveness of the senior men’s side.
“We really wanted to compete well in 2018 and we certainly did that,” McLeish said, adding that the club is quickly turning its attention to 2019.
“We’re filthy we didn’t win that grand final.”
While preserving the majority of their 2018 playing squad – Benji John was the only significant departure – and adding Claude Gordon, Lewis Dwyer and Logan Harris, the biggest change has come in coaching.
Hancock has taken the senior’s coaching responsibilities, with Sutton moving to an assistant’s role as well as handling recruitment and retention.
McLeish said he could sense that Hancock was developing an affinity for the playing group throughout the 2018 season before approaching him to ask if he was interested in the role.
“I got a sense he was really warming to the playing group and he is very experienced as far as club structure is concerned,” McLeish said.
Sutton, who took on the head coaching role as part of a short-term commitment, said Hancock was the obvious candidate.
“I had no intentions of wanting to do it this year, so it was more or less a no-brainer,” Sutton said, adding he’s desperate to taste success with the Magpies, their last first-grade premiership coming in 1995.
Nevertheless, he’s keen to see some success, and soon.
“[It just means so much] for the local blokes, who turn up week in, week out, and get bashed every week, and in some years they’ve been doing that and they know they’re no hope of winning the comp.”
“They still turn up, and they still put in the effort, and they still put on the jumper and wear it with pride, and they take pride in their performance.”
“They’re the guys I want to see successful.”