Saints promise a tough time from the bounce
ST MARY’S coach Troy Mitchell has promised that St Joseph’s makeshift ruckman Ben Capra won’t be given an easy ride in this afternoon’s grand final.
St Joseph’s shifted 189cm defender Capra into the ruck role to enable three tall targets to be up forward against Colac in the preliminary final.
But Mitchell sees the key ruck battle as an aspect of the game his team can take advantage of with their own threepronged ruck division, consisting of Andrew Banjanin, Brenton Snowdon and Trent McMullan.
“I thought Capra did a really good job last week, he worked his butt off for his footy club, which was a credit to him, but he’s coming up against a very good ruckman,” Mitchell said.
“We’ve got Snowdon and McMullan too who will all go through there as well, so Capra will have a different variety of ruckman to compete against, which won’t be easy.”
Mitchell believes No.1 ruckman Banjanin hasn’t quite got the credit he deserves for his output this season.
“Banjo is a terrific footballer,” he said.
“He is very well liked, well respected and actually has a fair bit to say to the playing group which is important come tomorrow. He’s been terrific this year.”
Today will be Mitchell’s 139th game as a GFL coach, drawing him equal ninth in the list of games coached at GFL level.
The former Lara coach stated there was no expectation on making a grand final at the start of 2017, yet he is confident his Saints have done everything right to atone for losing the 2016 decider to Leopold.
“I feel we deserve to be here, but certainly as a club we didn’t say at the start of the year, ‘we want to make a grand final’,” he said.
“All the expectation is on how we want to play as a footy club. I do think we deserve to be there and win it.” ST MARY’S v ST JOSEPH’S