Coolamon still looking for improvement

Coolamon has won its opening seven games of the season and heads into this weekend’s general bye in first position on the ladder and arguably the warm favourites to take out the premiership later in the year.

However, Hard this morning claimed Coolamon was still a work-in-progress and had several key areas it needed to improve in the coming months.

“We still have a lot of areas to work on,” Hard said.

“Without going into the specifics, there are still certain areas we need to be better in.

“One of those areas is consistency and we really need to play for the full four quarters.

“I have been finding that we have been playing in spurts and dropping off at stages and we need to start to string together consistent patches of good footy.

“We need to improve because we know all of the other sides will improve as well.”

With Coolamon the talk of the RFL, Hard revealed the Hoppers had been taking no notice of the ladder or the widespread belief that the team will be one of the main contenders for the flag.

“To be honest we haven’t thought about ladder position or anything like that,” Hard said.

“We are happy with where we are sitting and we wouldn’t complain about it but we aren’t reading anything into it.

“We have just been honest with each other and we sit down each week and review areas that we can do better and we look to improve each game.”

Coolamon has beaten every team in the competition except for perennial heavyweight Ganmain-Grong Grong-Matong and the two giants of the RFL jungle will tangle after the bye in a blockbuster clash at Ganmain Sportsground on Saturday week.

GGGM has lost just one game and sits in second position behind Coolamon and Hard said the Hoppers would be prepared for potentially their biggest challenge of the season against the Lions.

“Definitely, it will be a big game and a big test,” Hard said.

“It doesn’t matter where Coolamon or where Ganmain are sitting on the ladder because they are always big games with the rivalry and the respect we have for each other.

“The fact we are one and two (on the ladder) will make it an even bigger game and we will look forward to it after the bye.”

Coolamon will enjoy a quieter week on the training track and Hard said he would not be pushing the players too much even though they will not be playing this weekend.

“We will back it off a little bit,” Hard said.

“We will give the boys a bit of a freshen up and just train as normal this week and we know we have a very big game when we get back into it.

“The boys have been really committed and we have strung together six weeks of hard work since our last bye.”

Coolamon is expected to have strong representation in the RFL representative team which will take on Sydney AFL under 23s in Wagga on Sunday.

The squad has been training for two weeks and a final team will be announced following training in Narrandera on Wednesday night.