A reinforced Rochester side will take to the field at Moon Oval this Saturday, as the Tigers gear up for a fascinating Anzac round clash with Tatura.
Kyabram punished a slow-to-start Rochester last weekend, overcoming the Tigers after a first-half demolition, which had the Bombers up by 61 points at the main break.
Tigers mentor Steven Stroobants said cleaning up around the contest would put his side in much better stead this weekend.
“We’ve been a little bit inconsistent here and there and especially on the weekend against Ky,” Stroobants said.
“Our first half, we got smashed in contested possessions and ground-ball gets, it’s something we’ll look to clean up this week.
"We sort of fixed that in the second half and evened up the scoring but the damage was already done by then.
“It’s obviously a tough test this week, we need to be up and about for the four quarters and really putting the pressure on to get the win against Tatura.”
The Bulldogs regrouped from a narrow round one defeat to Kyabram, roaring to a memorable one-point win in the shadows of the fourth quarter against Benalla last Friday.
“They were obviously very solid against Ky in round one, only just got rolled by three or four goals there, and then got over the line against Benalla on the weekend in a close one,” Stroobants said.
“They’ll be raring to go and trying to get us on the hop, so we’ve got to be up and about early and winning the contested footy and clearances and playing the game in our half.
“The first few weeks we haven’t been able to do that for long enough periods of the game so we’re looking to do that for a good four quarters this week.”
Despite the loss of 2018 best-and-fairest Doug Wren in round one, Stroobants said his side would be buoyed by the return of Shaun Atley this weekend, with a number of other key figures returning after missing periods of pre-season.
“We’ve obviously lost Dougy Wren for the year, but other than that we’re starting to get a few boys back, our captain Nathan Marrone, Nathan McCarty and Nick O’Connor all played last week after limited pre-season,” Stroobants said.
“Shaun Atley is back this week as well, which will be great for our group, we’ll look to get those guys a bit of match fitness and we’ll be going okay once they get going.”
The Tigers roared back to life in their loss to Kyabram with a dominant third-quarter showing, a performance Stroobants said his side would look to produce more consistently this weekend.
“We had a stern word at half-time and said it wasn’t good enough what we were producing, we put the hard word on some of our leaders who stood up in the third quarter,” he said.
“Stats-wise our contested possessions were plus-15 in the third quarter so it’s no secret what you’ve got to do to start playing good footy — it’s obviously winning it first and being able to use it from there — that’s what we pride ourselves on.
“We’ll look to put that right, it’s only early in the season so there’s plenty of time left, hopefully we start getting some continuity in our game in the next few weeks.”
Rochester welcome Tatura to Moon Oval this Saturday, with first bounce at 2:35pm.