By Matt Findlay; Photo: Andrew Quinn

With Gordon’s woeful 2018 campaign in mind it’s hardly a surprise to hear Darren Coleman say he’s over the moon his Highlanders have clawed into the Shute Shield’s top six.

The job’s not done though, far from it.

Although he’s stoked with his side’s resurgence there’s still six rounds remaining in the regular season and Gordon’s coach wants to at least stay in the finals frame, or ideally climb even higher on the standings.

“At the start of the year if you’d given me the chance to be in play-off contention with six rounds to go, I’d have definitely taken it,” Coleman said.

“We probably need to win at least four of those six games left and there’s no gimmes in that, so for us it’s just trying to continue to improve.

“I’d like to think the two-point win over Randwick in our last game was a turning point for us in terms of finding that ability to win those close games, before that we’d lost five games by a try or less.

“We’d had some one-sided wins as well, but we’d never really hung on in a tight game so to do that against Randwick, I’m hoping, was a sign that we can grind out those close ones, which would put us in good stead.”

That climb is certainly still possible too, with the Highlanders eight points adrift of fifth-placed Manly heading into Saturday’s round 13 trip to Forshaw Park to face Southern Districts.

That’s not an easy trip by anyone’s standards and it actually begins a reasonably tough run to the finals for Gordon, who face West Harbour, Eastwood, Northern Suburbs, Eastern Suburbs and Western Sydney in the last five rounds.

Saturday’s trip is made even tougher considering the ninth-placed Rebels are “basically playing to stay alive”, as Coleman put it, and have momentum after snapping a seven-game losing streak last weekend.

They’ll have plenty of extra motivation too, this weekend is the club’s annual Back to St George Day, where they re-live their glory days and pay homage to the club’s heritage by wearing the famous red and white.

“They’re good, very good. Souths at Souths, I haven’t come away from there as a winner too many times,” Coleman said.

“There’s a lot of quality in that team and where they are on the ladder isn’t where they should be. 

“They’ve had a rough trot, but they seem to be picking up a bit of momentum and they seem to lift a lot whenever Jed Holloway comes back.

“They did it easy last week too, they scored their four-try bonus point in the first 20 minutes (against Western Sydney). 

“They’re basically playing to stay alive really too, if they drop this one they’ll be pretty close to out of it, so it’ll be really, really tough.”

Saturday’s Shute Shield clash kicks off at 3pm at Forshaw Park.