2024 Northern Pride RLFC season

2024 is the seventeenth competitive season for the Cairns based Kenfrost Homes Northern Pride Rugby League Football Club. They are one of 15 clubs that compete in Queensland's top rugby league competition, QRL's Hostplus Cup. The Northern Pride will play 10 home games and 10 away games over 23 rounds between March and August.

Eric Smith was appointed as coach on a two-year contract, replacing Ty Williams, who had coached the Pride for the last seven years. Smith was captain-coach for CDRL Brothers Cairns (2007–2011), Brothers Cairns operations manager (2011), captain-coach of CRL Group 21 Muswellbrook Rams (2012), captain-coach Group 9 Tumut Blues (2013), assistant coach QCup Brisbane Tigers (2014), assistant coach (2015) and coach (2016–2017) for the NRL U-20s Melbourne Storm, head coach winning a minor-premiership for QCup Vantage Homes SC Falcons (2019), and development coach for NRL Telstra Premiership nib Newcastle Knights (2020–2022).

The Pride are a feeder club to the North Queensland Toyota Cowboys. The Cowboys split their squad of first grade and development players between their QCup feeder clubs, and players that are not required for that weekend's NRL fixture play for their feeder team. The Pride and Cutters have been Cowboys feeder clubs since they entered the competition in 2008, and the Blackhawks became the third feeder club when they joined the competition in 2015. Last season the Cowboys sent most of their affiliated players to the Blackhawks, which resulted in the Townsville club terminating their arrangement with the Cowboys, and signing a two-year affiliation (2024–2025) with South Sydney Rabbitohs instead. This means for the first time in ten years, the Cowboys' allocation is divided between just two teams (the Pride and Cutters), rather than three, and so the 2024 season should see more Cowboys playing for the Pride than last year.

Four Pride players, Ewan Moore, Rashaun Denny, Lachlan West and Kyle Schneider did pre-season training with the Cowboys NRL squad between 1 November and the Christmas break 2023, with Moore and Schneider being selected to play for the Cowboys in their pre-season trial match against the Brisbane Broncos in Mackay on 17 February 2024.

The Pride only played one pre-season trial match this year, a three-way competition with CDRL 2023 premiers, Brothers Cairns, and local QCup rivals Townsville Blackhawks. The Pride played one-half against Brothers, then Brothers played the second-half against the Blackhawks. This match was immediately followd by a match between the Pride and Blackhawks. The game was played in torrential Wet season rain.

Competitions
The Pride's first grade side competes in the QRL State competition, the Hostplus Cup. The club also field academy teams in the Auswide Bank Mal Meninga Cup U18, Cyril Connell Challenge U16, and women's teams in the Harvey Norman U19 and Harvey Norman U17.


 * Hostplus Cup
 * Auswide Bank Mal Meninga Cup U18
 * Cyril Connell Challenge U16
 * Harvey Norman (F) U19
 * Harvey Norman (F) U17

2024 Season – Kenfrost Homes Northern Pride

 * Competition: Hostplus Cup
 * Sponsor: Kenfrost Homes.

Coaches/Trainers

 * Coach: Eric Smith.
 * Assistant coach: Sam Obst.
 * Assistant coach: Will Bugden.
 * Auswide Bank Mal Meninga Cup U-19 coach: Bevan Walker.
 * Cyril Connell Challenge U-17 coach: Kris O'Farrell.
 * Harvey Norman U-19 women's' coach: Flori King-Smith.
 * Harvey Norman U-17 women's coach: Elio Oberleuter.
 * Strength and conditioning coach: Tim Holdsworth.
 * First Aid Officer: Shane Jarvis.

Captains

 * Captain: Kyle Schneider.
 * Vice-captains: Ewan Moore and Evan Child.

Managers

 * Football Operations Manager: Tanya Tully.
 * Team Manager: Sam Harreman.
 * CEO: Garreth Smith.
 * Chairman: Terry Medhurst.
 * Board Members: Joel Riethmuller (player representative), Micheal Luck (Cowboys representative), Mark Whitnall, Leon Yeatman, Stephen Devenish and Sarah Campbell, ?? (FNQRL representative), ?? (CDJRL representative).

2024 Squad
Allocated but has not played for the Pride in 2024:

Season launch

 * Pre-Season Training: 13 November 2023.
 * Season launch: Brothers World of Entertainment, 23 February 2024.

Sponsors

 * Kenfrost Homes
 * Cairns Regional Council, Brothers Cairns
 * North Queensland Cowboys, Pacific Toyota, Recovery Lab, Triple M 99.5, Totally Workwear, Goodline, OSE Group, GNB Energy, Skytrans, Your Fitness, EV2 Sportswear, Far North Physiotherapy, Crowies Paints, Status Signs, Terry White Chemmart, Coral Coast Laundry, Babinda Electrics, The Benson Hotel, Ringers Western, Mortgage Choice, Heightened Security, Smit Lamnalco.

Northern Pride (regular season 2024)

 * Win = ? (? of 10 home games, ? of 10 away games)
 * Loss = ? (? of 10 home games, ? of 10 away games)
 * Draw = ? (? of 10 home games, ? of 10 away games)