North Ballarat senior football coach Brendan McCartney speaks after round 17 BFNL match against Redan. Video by Greg Gliddon

The Courier

Transcript

00:00But yeah, but as you say, tough six or seven weeks and you've come through it, you've guaranteed

00:04final, you've now got the week off to, you know, really prepare for whatever comes ahead.

00:08It's come at a good time. We've always thought, you sort of, the last round by, you look at it

00:13two ways. Sometimes it might be not what you not need if you're trying to get some momentum, but

00:18we've sort of weathered a really tough patch. So have Redan, you know, I was talking to Gary before

00:22and, you know, they're struggling to put teams on the park because of injuries and

00:26we found another one today, Simon, a little bit of a high hammy strain by the look of it. You know,

00:31one of those innocuous, you're kicking, you get pushed, overstretch and he's pretty sore,

00:36so he's going to be a loss, but we will get some troops back. Has he done many in the past?

00:41Yeah, he's had some, he's had, he's had a stage in his career where soft tissues pop up.

00:47So you're probably looking semi-final, pre-league final at the earliest sort of thing,

00:50or depending on what, you know, at the earliest. I mean, it's not something that's going to come

00:53back in two weeks. No, no, no, he won't be right in two weeks, you wouldn't think so,

00:58unless it's a miracle of modern science, which we don't seem to get much of these days.

01:02But we were four goals down today and picked ourselves up and got going.

01:07Second quarter.

01:08Yeah, the slow start was maybe reflective of a tough six or seven weeks of footing for young

01:13bodies. So we get an opportunity and that callusing for those young guys is going to be

01:20really important come finals week, because that's what the game's about. It's physical,

01:25it's dog-eat-dog and they've been conditioned to it. So I think we'll freshen them up a little bit,

01:30get some good work, you know, later in the week and early next week and get ready to play.

01:33Expectations for the first final, who are you expecting that you're going to put out of over?

01:37It depends, you know, I think it still can change, you know, if Ballarat win the last game,

01:41they jump above us. So, and if they do beat East Point, well, they deserve it.

01:45Good luck to them.

01:45Yeah, good luck to them. So we'll just get on with it, you know.

01:51Yeah, you gave Cam a bit of a wrap in the rooms there. I thought your clearance game

01:55was probably the difference between the two sides.

01:57It was after quarter time, you know, they stitched us up a little bit

02:01earlier as we were a bit reactive and on our heels. But once we got moving and working together

02:07and Cam, Cam's just, Cam's a grinding sort of ruckman, like he needs games to build form. So

02:13it's his second game back and he'll be, he'll be, his finals last year was unbelievable. So

02:19fully expect he'll have a big impact again.

02:21I know it's anywhere, anytime and, you know, there's a bit of green with two,

02:24with eight posts either end of the ground, but it's nice to walk off this ground a week or so

02:29from the finals knowing that you've had a week given.

02:31Yeah, we like playing here. Yeah, we do. We, we, it's a, you know, it's a,

02:35it's a tricky ground to defend sometimes, but we, we managed it. We seem to do it pretty well here.

02:39We sort of, we're pretty good at covering the corridor. We generated, was it 27 shots to 16?

02:47So we, we did a lot right.

02:49Third quarter, I think some of 2-9 or 2-8 or something like that. So you could have,

02:52you could have blown it away.

02:52It's a bit of work. We've got a little bit of work to do in the offense, but that's

02:56sort of been us for a while.

02:56The connection was there, it was probably just the final kick, that goal.

02:58A little, and a little one inside 50. So we did set some goals up and, but we were

03:03peppering from probably too far away at times. We've got a bit of set shot work to do

03:08and a little bit of moving the ball on slow play too.

03:12Potentially, potentially four weeks to go, Brendan. It's, it's going to come quick, isn't it?

03:16Well, I still think we're in a better position than we were last year. I don't think,

03:19we weren't playing our best footy before the finals. We had blokes out.

03:23We've sort of been trying to add some things to our game and it's starting to,

03:27to come out. So fingers crossed we've, we're honing in on the right things.

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