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