Honner needs to be at best for Thompson
THE battle between Tori Honner and Kate Thompson is looming as one of several mouth-watering contests when St Joseph’s and South Barwon meet at McDonald Reserve on Saturday.
Honner, who won the GFNL league best-and-fairest award in 2016 after a superb year in defence for Joeys, will have first crack at Thompson, a Victorian Fury premiership star.
But St Joseph’s coach Riley Richardson has warned it will take more than her sublime skill set and intercepting nous to stop the Swans posting a winning total, and has implored his team to carry a collective defensive attitude into the must-win clash.
“The one thing about having Tori Honner in your team is you never really have to worry about a goal attack, she is just such a consistent performer each week,” Richardson said.
“They are both two highcalibre players, though, with state representation behind them, so I’m really looking for- ward to seeing what she can do against Kate
“But defence is a sevenplayer effort, and I think if you can get everybody working cohesively to defend their set structure and if everyone is doing their job, there is no telling what you can do.”
St Joseph’s has had an upand-down run with form and injuries, but it has turned its form around with consecutive wins over Leopold and Colac.
Part of that shift can be attributed to greater consistency from forward pair Georgia Clark and Kailah-Mae Keepen, who, Richardson said, had been working extremely hard at training to get a better understanding of each other’s style.
“Initially we ran into a few hiccups because they play a similar sort of game,” he said.
“But one thing we’ve been focusing on at training is working for the collective end goal, which is just someone scoring.
“It doesn’t matter who, so that has changed our focus on court and we’re making sure that goalers are starting to work for each other, be aware of each other and starting to integrate that into their games, and obviously it is showing on the scoreboard for us, which is great.”
St Joseph’s sits in sixth spot on the ladder but with St Mary’s, Colac and Lara all breathing down its neck, there is every chance it could slip to ninth by the end of the round.
South Barwon, meanwhile, sits in second position on the table, two games and percentage clear of fourth-placed Leopold.