Late try seals special win for Pride against Magpies

Souths have undergone an emotional journey the last two weeks, with big losses and heart-breaking losses mixed into the mix.

The Pride have won three of their last four, while the Magpies haven’t won since Round 4.

Eddie Daniel was on debut for the Northern Pride and brought all his local knowledge of Ken Brown Oval to the Pride’s attack in the first five minutes as a Cup player when he jumped on a short kick and had gave the Pride a great start.

The Magpies hit back via winger Jack Smith was the beneficiary of a Sailor short kick when the Magpies came to the right and Sailor brought the defence up. The kick turned them around and the Magpies had their first try and Smith his second try in two Cup games.

For their next points, it was Sailor again, but this time his quick thinking dummy half work not his kicking game that was having an impact. After Magpies’ Kobe Tararo dug in to the Pride’s line Sailor went to dummy half and quickly went the blind side to find Smith and his second try tonight.

At halftime, both teams had thrown plenty of attack at each other, but only three tries showed that chances had been created but not fully taken.

The first team to settle down and apply multiple set pressure would score points.

The Pride were absorbing plenty of pressure, but kept finding a way to turn the Magpies away.

It took 15 minutes for a chance to present itself and it was that man Sailor again when he got the ball on the right and delivered a pass for Fe’ao Maka to cross, but it was ruled forward and Souths would have to reset and go again.

However, it was the Pride that reset and took advantage of an opportunity.

The Pride went up and looked set to score in the left corner – and when that came up short – they were all set out to the right.

However, Mark Rosendale had a Plan B and like all good wingers, he was game aware and dived over and slammed the ball down to give the Pride the points they desperately needed and lock the game up at 10-10.

Pride then found the winner with a long range try that sealed the win.

From a scrappy turnover, Pride’s Ewan Moore took over down the field; looking for support as the forward ran out of legs he looked to his right and found Will Partridge who streaked away and scored under the posts and score his 10th try in 12 games for the Pride.

Partridge did the extra work and added two points to give the Pride 16-10 lead with 12 minutes to play.

That was enough and the Pride had gone to Thursday Island and come away with a win in a special game for the club where they wore jerseys commemorative former player Francis Maia Mosby.

Both teams will have next weekend off and play their Round 17 matches on the weekend of August 6-7.