Despite their preliminary final thrashing of Nyah-Nyah West United, Kerang will still go into Saturday’s grand final against Balranald as underdogs, according to senior coach Troy Coates.
The reigning premier’s path to this year’s decider now appears eerily similar to last year.
Kerang suffered a difficult second semi-final loss to the Cohuna Kangas in 2022, before monstering Woorinen in the preliminary final and then turning the tables on the Kangas in the final.
And with several Blues players returning from injury in recent weeks, the extra game time wasn’t seen as a negative by Coates, with his players better for the run ahead of the decider.
“Our path is very similar to the one we took last year, so that gives us a lot of confidence ahead of Saturday,” Coates said.
“We had several guys come into last year’s finals a bit underdone and just needing the run, we then played really well in the prelim final last year and took that form into grand final day.
“We’ll just try to emulate everything we did last year in terms of training, it’s quite uncanny how similar it’s working out.
“We went into last year’s grand final as underdogs and I think we’ll go in as underdogs next week as well.”
Balranald defeated Kerang by 50 points in the second semi-final to set up a shot at a long-awaited flag.
“I think the pressure’s on them a bit, similar to Cohuna last year,” Coates said.
“I don’t know how other people see it, but I’m assuming we’re the underdog, we’ll just go in there with nothing to lose and with the same mindset and attitude we had on the weekend, give it a red-hot crack and see what happens.”
The match against NNW United was effectively over as a contest by quarter-time after Kerang piled on eight unanswered goals, with the returning Brad Pay kicking four of those.
Lachlan Ross played just his second game back from injury and was influential off half back, while Michael Dalrymple and Sam Heavyside also showed flashes of their best form after injury-interrupted seasons.
With somewhere near his best team now back on the park, Coates was hoping his star-studded line-up would fire in four days’ time.
“Saturday was more about making amends for our performance last week, particularly our last quarter, I thought we rolled over and we were terrible (against Balranald),” Coates said.
“We were really focused on our mindset for the whole game, along with our pressure, bringing intensity and making up for a really poor performance from last week.
“I felt that (first quarter) was our best quarter of the season, we’ve been hit pretty hard with injuries at times, especially to some of our key players like Lachie Ross and Brad Pay, they are pretty key guys and once you get guys like that back, they make a huge difference to the way we play.”
Coates admitted the selectors had to “to roll the dice with a few guys” on Saturday given it was do-or-die.
“But thankfully they all got through,” he said.
“If we can find that same attitude and mindset again, we know we’ll be hard to beat.
“We’re under no illusions though, Balranald are a quality outfit, but I think we’re much better prepared this week than we were against them two weeks ago.”
