Sport
5 June, 2023
Gators roar in impressive win
THE Gladiators showed no mercy on home soil over the weekend against the Mossman Port Douglas Sharks, with A-Grade winning 38-28 during what has been described as their “best performance yet”.
The Sharks got out to an 8-0 lead early before the Gladiators fought back to lead into halftime, 16-14 after tries to Caleb Dally, Leon Wood and Trezman Banjo just before the break.
The second half started as a back and forth arm wrestle throughout and with four minutes remaining, it was 28-all.
The Gladiators had tries to Isaiah Bowen, Joe Shadrick and a barnstorming try from lan King.
With the game on the line the young Gladiators stood up with a quality try to Murphy Morris in his comeback game, after a perfect cross kick from Banjo was nabbed and a brilliant try scored.
Then from the ensuing kick-off with 30 seconds remaining Barba drilled a short kick for the sideline and King jumped to get the ball and keep
it in, shrugged off a defender and sped 60 metres down the sideline to seal the game to the ruptures of the home crowd.
Coach Chris Sheppard said he was proud of his team, especially Les Strickland and Eddie Tokara-hi, for their massive improvements throughout the season so far.
“Against Mossman, we backed up the Atherton and Yarrabah efforts and again had 17 contributors during the game,” he said.
“Mossman are a quality team that are well coached and have been one of the benchmarks for the comp over the last few years. They had a few out as did we and it was quite an entertaining end to end kind of game.
“Overall, it was our best performance to date however we realise we’ve got a lot to work on and we’ve got improvement in us but we’re heading in the right direction and need to keep working hard on our game.”
The Gladiators will be heading to Smithfield on Sunday to play against Ivanhoe.
