Assistant coach Henry Playfair sat down with us to give us an insight into preparations ahead of tonight's match against Richmond in this week’s Cellarbrations Coaches Column.
There’s always the fear of being flat-footed and off the pace coming back from a bye… is there any such worry within our coach’s box?
Not really, we don’t tend to look at the circumstances around when we play. We expect the same level of effort whenever we play and that is what we will be expecting on Friday night.
The playing group have trained well over the break and seem ready to go – and we expect them to play well.
What about Richmond makes this a ‘danger game’ for us?
For starters they have won five of their last six so they are in really good form.
They have a very balanced team, some quality goal kickers spearheaded by Jack Riewoldt, a great midfield with Dustin Martin, Trent Cotchin and Brett Deledio and a solid back six with Alex Rance and Troy Chaplin leading the way.
Across the park they have match winners.
A bit of talk earlier in the week was about the Tigers’ forward line. Does it pose a big challenge for our defenders?
Yeah they have some quality talls who can mark the footy and be effective at ground level so our tall backs will have a tough challenge.
We feel we can cover them ok with the defenders we have so we will back them in to get the job done.
How is your forward line tracking and how did you see their form in the first half of the season? In particularly Lance Franklin who will likely get Rance for company on Friday night.
Our forwards have had a solid start to the year. After a challenging first month we have put together some good footy, we have a mix of guys who can play forward and midfield, we can also rotate the forwards starting positions so we aren’t too predictable and make sure we share the workload.
Yes, I am expecting Rance to play on Buddy which will be a good match up. Bud has had a consistent year and he can impact the game a number of ways so we will be looking forward to seeing how he goes on Friday night.
