Relegation talk spurs on coach

ST ALBANS says it will not shy from the relegation fight, revealing the prospect of being banished to the BFL would serve as motivation.

Supersaints co-coach Jarrod Best said he and brother Hayden had highlighted the club’s predicament in a preseason camp in a bid to get the most out of the players.

“We definitely haven’t shied away from it,” Best said.

“Our group understands how important this year is. There’s (the possibility) of relegation and we know every game is important. Last week’s game was important and next week’s game is important, but coming up against Lara, we’re definitely looking at coming away with a win.

“We said that we didn’t want to be the group that went down to the Bellarine, and to be honest, we haven’t touched on it much since then.

“We understand the group must understand how important the season is, but I don’t think it’s something we have to dwell on for the whole season.

“We just need to do the best we can every week, and if we do that, the wins will look after themselves and hopefully we don’t have to have those discussions at the back-end of the season.”

With an opportunity for success against bottom-placed Lara today, Best knows the four points could set-up their season.

“We haven’t necessarily gone through the draw, but what we do know is we’ve got three winnable games (coming up), we believe,” he said.

“The Giants, we thought, was a winnable game. Lara is a winnable game and Grovedale is a winnable game.

“If we could have turned 3-2 after five rounds we would have been very happy, but after losing last week, we now set a goal to be 2-3.

“It’s important not to look too far ahead and try to pinpoint when you can win and when you can’t. At the backend of the season we want to steal games against some middle-of-the-road teams and some finals teams once we click as a team.”

Best said he was gutted with the lost against the Giants, with his side hammered in the first quarter.

“Last weekend was our worst performance of the season,” Best said. “We had 100 tackles against St Joseph’s and lost by five goals, but against West we had 40 tackles and lost by more.

“Going off that stat, our pressure around the ball dropped considerably.

“So it makes us even more hungry to beat Lara.”