Casey Scorpions youngster Steven O’Bryan is escorted off the ground after breaking his collarbone in the club’s practice match against the Northern Bullants on Saturday.By Marc McGowan
A MAJOR injury and a five-goal defeat to the Northern Bullants marked the start of the Casey Scorpions’ 2008 campaign at Casey Fields on Saturday.
The result of the Scorpions’ opening practice match was largely irrelevant, but a sickening clash with former Collingwood draftee Billy Morrison left promising youngster Steven O’Bryan with a broken collarbone.
O’Bryan had an operation yesterday (Wednesday) and is expected to be out for four to six weeks.
Casey laboured through three goalless and inaccurate quarters before kicking four majors in the last term to end up losing by 31 points.
St Kilda discard James Wall bagged two goals and Ben Waite and Jaymie Youle scored the other two for the Scorpions.
Casey stars Kyle Matthews, Stefan Garrubba and Ben Fraser sat out the contest, but all should be in the line-up for the Scorpions’ next practice game against Sandringham at Casey Fields on Saturday at 5.15pm.
The match will follow the NAB Challenge encounter between Melbourne and North Melbourne, which starts at 2pm.
Up to 10,000 fans are expected to flock to the Cranbourne East venue for the AFL fixture.
New Casey coach Greg Hutchison did not read much into the weekend’s proceedings, but conceded his players needed to improve their second efforts and tackling.
“It was obviously a good opportunity for the young guys to show what they can do and some of them acquitted themselves pretty well,” he said.
“We’re a very young group and that will be the case all year.
“We’re pretty inexperienced and we got a look at them in the heat of battle and they did a few good things.”
Hutchison was impressed with TAC Cup recruits Andrew Campbell and Shaun Dixon, and Saints-listed players Andrew McQualter, Brad Howard and Luke van Rheenen.
But the former Melbourne caretaker coach hinted that the Scorpions may be in for a tough year.
“We haven’t picked up anyone with a great deal of experience – really only guys from the TAC Cup competition who will need time to develop and I’m sure they will,” Hutchinson said.
“We’ll play what we’ve got and that’s mostly young guys anyway.
“It’s not as if we’ll wave a magic wand and all of a sudden we’ll recruit 10 experienced players this week.
“Most of the guys from last week will get another opportunity against Sandringham, which has a pretty seasoned group of players.”
