By Tyler Lewis
After a disappointing outing the week before, Berwick coach Clint Evans wanted a response from his Wickers.
He wasn’t expecting his young side to go out and beat Doncaster by 12 goals, but more show a bit of intent with how they used the footy.
And though they suffered an 11.7 (83) to 7.8 (50) defeat at the hands of the Sharks at Schramms Reserve, the Wickers did as their coached asked.
“The movement of the football between the arcs,” Evans explained as his area of focus this week.
“We wanted to take a bit more territory, whereas last week we were really stagnant… handball, kick, handball, kick.
“We wanted that, and they were a lot better at it this week, this week it was more our efficiency kicking inside our forward 50.
“It was really bad and that’s what we spoke about, it’s a bit of a care factor for your teammate, either by foot or by hand.”
In the last outing between Doncaster and Berwick, both units were without a win and the loss for Berwick resulted in Evans being ‘the flattest he has ever been after a game’.
With improvement coming in spades from both sides since, the Wickers head coach believes the difference between the sides this outing was the size of the average player.
“It was men versus boys, to be honest,” he said.
“They had (Jake) Spencer, (Mark) Jamar… our big full-back Jayden Graham who we tried at full-forward was fantastic in the first 15 minutes… and then he broke his ankle.
“We just have to keep on trying, playing the kids, that’s all we can do, we know we are going to be up against it and not get a heap back.
“We are 10 points in front of North Ringwood (in relegation territory), so we need to try and snatch one on the way home and be competitive.”
With Balwyn (third), Noble Park (second) and South Croydon (fifth) in the next three matches, Evans is under no illusions that it’s going to be a difficult run.
With the lack of expectation, Evans will tell his boys to take the game on, albeit a different way as injuries have hamstrung key posts.
“The same I think, take it on,” he said of his message over the next three weeks.
“As I said, we know how we’re going, we know what’s good and what’s bad, and we know we’re going to see both sides of it.
“There’s bursts in games where we can look really good and then there’s a five or 10-minute period where sides will get a hold of us.
“It’s all a learning curve, we want to try and take the game on more, but it’s also the soldiers we’ve got.
“We’ve been decimated, we’ve got no height – on the weekend, their coach said ‘kick it into the forward line like it’s a nine iron’ because they had Jamar down there.
“We have no height around the ground, so there’s different ways we want to play and a lot of it has to be ugly because we don’t have the guys up forward that can take a big grab.”
