Sunbury star Matthew Medcraft is in consideration for the Lions Ballarat Football League Good Friday clash with Melton South.
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The star midfielder has been in Queensland and playing for Port Douglas as he awaits finalisation on his work commitments. But this has allowed him to be in the selection frame for the first few weeks of the season.
Sunbury coach Ben Jordan said he would make a final call on the senior team on Thursday night, but said it was great to have a player of Medcraft’s quality available to play.
“He’s an accomplished footballer, but we don’t know at this stage how long we’ll have him...but what we do know is he’s been on the big stage before,” Jordan said.
Jordan said the Lions would have up to 11 changes from last year’s regular side. The vast turnover of players brings an element of excitement to the group, but equally an unknown.
Jordan said he had been buoyed by what he had seen through the pre-season, but expected the group to take time as it strives for a four-quarter performance.
“It will look a bit different on paper from what we put out last year, which creates excitement and opportunity.
“It is always a bit of an unknown as to how you’re going to measure up.
“When there’s four points on the line that’s when the true test is.
“Through our practice games we showed patches of really competitive footy, but we haven’t been able to string together a consistent four quarters.
“There were enough pleasing signs there to show me we’re pretty good with our intensity and work rate. But it’s a bit of a work in progress.”
Meanwhile, Melton South will be looking to iron out some chinks in its armor when it takes on Sunbury on Friday.
By the club’s own admission it did not produce its best football in the season opener against Melton last week. However, co-coach Sean Triplett said his initial assessment of the group may have been “a bit harsh”.
Melton South has had a well-documented off-season with a number of star recruits joining the club, Triplett said part of the challenge was getting all these players to jell as a team.
It has shown that its best football is devastating, it is now a matter of producing that throughout a full match.
“Jelling as a group, it’s going to take time, but slowly we’ll get there we think,” Triplett said.
“In the first quarter against Portarlington (in a practice match) we kicked 8.9 and the ball didn’t hit the ground.
“After watching the replay we were a bit better than what I gave us credit for. We’ve just got to take the errors out.
After a long-winded contract saga former Melton player Matthew Notman will debut for the Panthers.