The second half of the Goulburn Valley League split round lands this weekend and, like always, there’s plenty on the line.
An old rivalry reaches a new height with silverware on the line between Mooroopna and Tatura, two sides in the second half of the ladder seek crucial wins while a high-flier in recent strife meets another power in need of a revitalised performance.
Hear what some of the coaches had to say heading into the games.
Rochester coach Ash Watson:
“The Swans have had some good performances this year and have some quality in that side, particularly with the three ex-North Melbourne players.
“I think it’s going to be a massive challenge for us, but we’re confident if we play the way we want to play we’ll be in the game for sure.
“The (Shepparton United) one definitely hurt us, it was a winnable game for us.
“To kick 5.20 on that day was pretty disappointing and is something that we’ve looked at.
“There were some positives from that game, we won a lot of the statistical areas of importance for us, so we’re paying some reasonable footy, we just couldn’t really connect with our forwards and we missed some opportunities.
“If we can take in those positives with our ball movement and pressure and clearance work, then we’ll be in the game.
“Both young sides, both developing ― we played the Swans last year and they moved the ball really quickly, so we expect something pretty similar this weekend.
“They’ve got some quality top-end players in there which we’ll have to watch out for.
“We may have Nick O’Connor come back from a hamstring injury and potentially Jacob Atley from a knee injury, but we’ll have to wait on those wards.
“Charlie Ward has gone overseas, but other than that we should be pretty much the same.
Mansfield coach Chad Owens:
“I don’t think there is a bigger test is there? Echuca at Echuca is definitely the biggest one in the competition in terms of both travel and degree of difficulty of winning.
“There’s definitely a lot more pressure on them than us at the moment, so we’ll see how we go.
“We’re confident we can go over there, put our best foot forward and hopefully that’s good enough.
“(On Echuca’s loss to Seymour) Seymour beat us as well, so I don’t think we take anything out of that. Obviously it shows they’re beatable, but Mooroopna beat them last year, but they went on and won all their finals pretty convincingly.
“They’re a team stacked full of really good players and they play really well as a team as well.
“We’ll go over there with our game plan in mind about what we think we need to do, but we understand that it’s going to have its challenges ― if you’re off for four or five minutes, it’s probably going to cost you a few goals.
“If we bring our best footy and our pressure game ― which has probably let us down at times this year ― if we can get that back up again, we can hopefully make a few sides nervous. If we can put pressure on and make their ball forward a little bit dirtier and make our backmen’s job a bit easier, it should go a long way towards the result.
“We get Frazer Dale and Sam Thomson back this week which really helps our running game, our pressure game and our stoppage game.
“Cam Arnold won’t play this week, he’s got a charity run that he’s doing which hurts us structurally, but it gives someone else an opportunity as well.