Quite contrary for St Mary’s coach

ST MARY’S coach Troy Mitchell has forecast changes ahead of its Round 18 clash against Grovedale, conceding his team had “a few passengers” in Saturday’s loss to St Joseph’s.

Thrashed by a combined total of 100 points in two meetings against Joeys, Mitchell said the Saints had plenty of work to do to remain in premiership calculations.

“We’ve got to clean up a few things,” he said.

“At the moment we’ve got a few passengers in the side and we’ve got to work out what we’re going to do and how we’re going to straighten it up.

“That’s what good sides do, they accept responsibility and move on and do those things.”

When pressed about the lack of contribution from his players, Mitchell said his side had been exposed before Saturday’s clash.

“It’s been happening over the last couple of weeks. Bell Park exposed a couple (of players) last week and Joeys exposed a couple again, so we’ve got to make some calls and look at what we’ve got available to come back,” he said.

“That might not be the players in the seconds. I thought young Harry Ling did another good job down back, so it might be an under18 player.

“They’ve got to be able to play the way we want to be able to play. They’ve got to be able to play at that intensity the entire time and we’ve got too many guys who are intense for five minutes and they drop off, and we need to make sure we keep that up for the entire game, especially against Joeys and Bell Park.”

The Saints were woeful by hand and foot for much of the first half, allowing St Joseph’s to skip out to a six-goal lead.

But a 10-minute burst in the latter stages of the second term, in which St Mary’s closed to within 19 points, gave Mitchell confidence his team could match it with the ladder leaders.

“Watching from the sidelines, I was trying to work out why we were doing those simple, basic things so badly,” he said.

“Then all of a sudden we got going. And the positive thing is we know we can play good footy. But we just need to get rid of that crap where we turned it over too easy and leaked easy goal.

“We need to stop doing that if we want to compete. Do I believe we can do that? For sure.”

Sam Dobson, Trent McMullin and Pat Dowling will return for the Saints in a