By Tara Murray
Whittlesea is hoping a slower start to the Northern Football League division 2 season will hold it in good stead come finals time.
The Eagles were the best team during the regular season last year, but a straight set finals exit left them disappointed.
Coach Garry Ramsay said they were doing things differently to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself.
“We want to peak later in the season, a couple of weeks later this time” he said. “We’ll build towards finals, the last six to eight weeks.
“We looked at how we could do things differently from last year. I haven’t been as hard on them and we haven’t trained as many times.
“From about round 12 we’ll look to train three to four times a week and footy will be the number one focus.
“Last year we were batted up come finals.”
Ramsay said they had been able to keep their core group together and the people they’ve bought in are players looking to return to the club.
He said they had started to bring some younger players into the side as they also plan for the future.
“That is the plan,’ he said. “We have another 18 weeks to get things right.
“The results aren’t much better at the moment, but hopefully some of the younger fellows improve as we are going to need to improve on what we did last year.”
Ramsay said while they had gone two from two, they weren’t at the same level they were at this time last season.
On Saturday, the Eagles made it two from two with victory against Watsonia.
Ramsay said that Watsonia pushed them all game and had the better of them in some areas.
Despite that, the Eagles did enough to come away with a 17.9 (111)-12.12 (84) win.
“Watsonia was more intense than us and I thought they tackled better,” Ramsay said. “We didn’t play well but we were happy to get the win.
“Credit to Watsonia, they were harder than us.”
Ramsay said half forwards Jaron Murphy and Lucas Hobbs were the difference in the game, with not much else between the two sides.
Murphy kicked six first half goals in a best on ground performance while Hobbs kicked three.
In other results Old Paradians and Thomastown are still without wins.
The Raiders were no match for Northcote Park, losing 15.14 (104)-6.8 (44). Best Players
Billy Bedford and Marcus Nolan were named the Raiders best.
Thomastown suffered a big loss against Macleod, 23.19 (157)-10.11 (71). Jake Nikolov, and Deakyn Smith were the Bears best.
