THE Swan Hill Flyers are set for a gruelling weekend on the road, with both the men’s and women’s teams facing the Bendigo Braves and Kyneton Tigers.
It will be the Flyers’ first double-header weekend of the CBL North West season and follows both teams’ defeats to the Melton Thoroughbreds at home.
Last Sunday’s game was a particularly bitter pill for the men’s team to swallow, having led for the majority before being overrun in the dying minutes and falling just one point short.
Despite the heartbreaking loss, men’s coach Hugh Broad was optimistic about his team’s chances this weekend, with the confidence gained from last Sunday’s performance hopefully setting them up for another strong showing in both games.
“Starting 0-1 is not ideal, but we have a really good opportunity to walk away with a couple of wins this weekend I feel,” Broad told The Guardian.
“We beat (Bendigo) at home last year even though they’re always really handy, and Kyneton we’ve been pretty successful against over the past couple of seasons as well.
“(Kyneton) have a new coach, so we’re not too sure what to expect from them, but we’re hoping for two wins across the weekend.
“We’ll be missing Lachie Gardner this weekend unfortunately, but we’ll have Steve Bowden as an inclusion and we’ll still have our development players on the bench, but Lachie is a really good offensive player, he’s a good scorer and is a big body, so he will be a loss.”
The Braves will go in as the Flyers’ biggest challenge of the weekend, having defeated Kyneton by 32 points and with a roster that typically contains strong shooters, meaning the Flyers will need to place a strong emphasis on defence, according to Broad.
“They have a couple of big bodies in their side, so Steve (Bowden) and I will have to work really hard to stop them getting in under the ring,” Broad said.
“Our outside shooting needs to be a little bit better than it was last week as well, and I’m pretty confident that it will be.
“We’ll be putting a bit of emphasis on defending the perimeter and then using the bigger bodies that we have to try to combat a bit of their height, but they’ll be a lot taller than us.”
It will be a similar story for the Flyers women’s team, who will go into their games undersized and undermanned, with Tamara Weiss, Ryley Purcell and Indi Grey all set to miss.
The trio’s absence will only serve to make Swan Hill’s task all the harder, considering both Bendigo and Kyneton played off in last year’s CBL North West grand final.
But the challenge is far from insurmountable, according to head coach Adam Kerr, who hoped his team could bring the same level of effort and intensity on defence as they did last Sunday against Melton.
“Knowing who our opposition are, I think this week will be a step up in intensity, pace and skill,” Kerr said.
“If we can compete on every possession both offensively and defensively, however, and we can do that for three quarters, if not more, then we’ll be thereabouts.
“We may not be the tallest team going around and we may not be the most skilful, but we’re one of the most determined and the girls are having a crack.
“It’s all about being competitive and developing at the moment, and hopefully the back end of this season and over the next couple of years, we’ll be in a much stronger position.
“We were pretty competitive last Sunday for the first three quarters and we took that away as a positive.
“Hopefully we can keep building that way and stay in games for longer and keep developing our younger players for years to come, but this weekend is just another opportunity for us to improve as we’ve worked on a few things this week like our ball movement, boxing out and cleaning up on the boards.”
With Weiss, Grey and Purcell all missing, the Flyers will be hoping for big games from key players Tess Denham, Karla Allen and Shaylea Kerr, along with improving stars Scarlet Grey and Ava Crow.
