The Swan Hill Flyers will be chasing dual wins this weekend in order to keep their finals hopes alive, with the men’s team to face Maryborough and Castlemaine on the road.
Sitting sixth and two points outside the top four, the men’s team has to win their final three matches if they are to be any chance of breaking their finals drought this season, with the team to play Kyneton in their final match at home next weekend.
It has been a difficult fortnight for Swan Hill, with back-to-back losses to rivals Mildura hurting their chances of making the playoffs and leaving them in a precarious position, according to men’s coach Hugh Broad.
“Maryborough we look at being a winnable game and I think we have a good chance of getting over the top of them,” Broad told The Guardian this week.
“Castlemaine have proven to be a really tough team, every coach would love to come away with the win every single game and we’re no different, but looking at their roster and their experience, we just want to make sure that we’re at the very least competitive against them.
“Our boys are good enough to be competitive with anyone in the league, we’ve got great talent and we can play great defence when we want and we can make teams work really hard.
“I’d love to get over the top of Maryborough and push Castlemaine and if they are to win, I want to make them earn it, I want opposition teams to not look forward to playing us.
“All our games this season have been competitive, we were one point up at halftime against Mildura and we’ve come close to just about every team in the league.
“We’ve built the belief that we can be competitive, now it’s just a matter of getting over the top and getting the results by keeping our composure and continuing to work hard in the third and fourth quarters.”
The second halves have proven to be the Flyers’ achilles heel in recent weeks, having lead by one-point at halftime in both games against the Heat, before being overrun in the second half.
Lachlan Somerville and Matthew Gardner will hold the keys offensively for the Flyers, as will Lachie Gardner under the basket, but it’s his ability to rotate and manage his key players that Broad admits he needs to work on to avoid another second half fade-out.
“It’s a challenge with our time and fatigue management for some of our players who are providing a decent amount of work rate at times,” Broad said.
“Lachie Somerville and Matty Gardner rarely hit the bench and when they do, we’ve had to work a lot harder as a team to maintain our level of energy, effort and offensive output.
“Lachie Somerville is one who just works so hard in the first half and it’s nothing against him, but he’s working at 110 percent and as a coach, it falls back on me to rotate and manage that fatigue so we can play four quarters really competitively instead of being a flash in the pan for a half.
“That may mean being behind at halftime instead of being in front, but making sure our players are well rested.”
The Flyers will be without Steven Bowden for Saturday nights match against Maryborough, with Bowden returning to their line-up for Sunday’s game against Castlemaine, with Sam Bull another key inclusion from last Saturday night’s loss to Mildura.
Although their season hasn’t gone according to plan, Broad has been more than impressed with the next generation of Flyers stars coming through the ranks, with Bryce Anderson one such player who has taken his game to another level in recent weeks.
“Bryce (Anderson) is an under 18’s player and has made his way into the starting five and I cannot play without him, he’s done an incredible job and he’s without doubt one of the most exciting players in Swan Hill at the moment,” Broad said.
“He reads defence and positions himself really well, he’s been really exciting to watch and is someone who has come a lot further than I expected him to.
“He can play anywhere from shooting guard to centre, he spreads the floor, he’s tall, he runs really hard and he works really hard, which is something our team wants to be known for and Bryce fits that really well.”
The Swan Hill Flyers women’s side will also be in action this weekend, with the team to play the Maryborough Blazers on the road at 4pm on Saturday before the men at 6pm.
The Flyers men’s game against the ladder-leading Castlemaine Cannons begins at 1pm on Sunday at Castlemaine War Memorial Stadium.
