Langer Cup 2020: Marsden State High School take own brand into Langer Cup season
Marsden State High School players have vowed to do it their way when the side takes its own, unique style of rugby league into the elite Langer Cup schoolboy competition.
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Marsden State High School players will take their own, unique style of rugby league into the elite Langer Cup schoolboy competition.
The Brisbane Broncos-sponsored schoolboy competition has an unofficial kick-off on Wednesday, July 22, when St Mary’s College Toowoomba host Coombabah SHS in a playoff to fill the sixth and final position.
The match will be live-streamed by The Courier-Mail and affiliated News organisations in Toowoomba, Ipswich and on the Gold Coast.
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Marsden, last season’s state final runners-up, will take their own brand into the 2020 season which starts for them on July 29 with an away game to Keebra Park SHS.
“We are not overly old, and we are not going to be a gigantic side, but we are going to be a reasonably fit side and we will play a certain brand of footie that we think what will suit us,’’ said coach Jesse Maclean.
“It won’t be a style which is necessarily on TV or that other schools play. We are going to play our brand that the Marsden kids have really taken to.
“At times it might look like it is unstructured, or unplanned, but behind closed doors we are planning for these things.’’
Maclean said his team’s style may at times looked undisciplined, but it was not. “We have to work with the cattle we have got, and the boys can play footie and I am not going to force them into a Melbourne Storm or a Cooper Cronk mould of play.
“We have a big focus on core skills and just backing ability and being proud of having that ability to be different to pother people.’’.
But Maclean said the team’s biggest goal was mustering a strong defensive unit.
“We see that as our biggest attribute against other powerhouse schools,’’ he said.
“They are a lot bigger, athletic and older, so we need to be a defensive team.’’
With an extraordinary honour board of notable past rugby league players, topped by Cameron Smith, and following state final appearances (2017, 2019), there is an expectation that Marsden SHS should be successful.
“This group is no different in its aspirations,’’ Maclean said.
“Their older brothers, cousins, friends were in those teams (2017-2019) and that is what they are aspiring to do (be successful).
“They are not even talking about next year or the year after, they are talking about this year because they want to make their own name.
“We have young brothers from last year playing who want to do what their brothers did, but go one better.’’
Maclean said within Logan City, rugby league was the No. 1 sport and at Marsden it was No. 1 and the school was blessed to get “some pretty gifted footballers walk through the front gate’’.