Not really home, but it’ll feel like it

GEELONG Supercats coach Leon O’Neill believes his side — and the crowd — can create a home-court advantage at AWA Alliance Bank Stadium for Saturday night’s elimination final against NW Tasmania.

The Supercats have never played there, booted off The Arena this weekend for the Australian Open of table tennis, but have trained every Thursday night at the Belmont venue.

O’Neill said his side had a great feel of its second home court.

“Every stadium is slightly different and when you’re shooting — trying to put a small piece of rubber through an iron hoop — it’s really a lot about depth perception and how you see the ring,” he said.

“Playing at a place like Bendigo or Hobart, there’s much more space behind the backboard and ring, so there’s a different feeling and a different vision when you shoot it.

“It’s the (opposite) at AWA, it’s more of a closed-in feeling than The Arena. We’ve had all season to get used to playing there and hopefully that is enough of an advantage to get us into Round 2 of the finals.”

But O’Neill added that a heavily-weighted home crowd would be just as important on Saturday night.

“If we can squeeze 850 people in there it’s going to be incredibly loud and a really ferocious and uncomfortable environment (for the opposition) to play in,” he said.

“It’s not The Arena and we love playing at The Arena — I’ve said many times that it’s the biggest home-court advantage in the SEABL — but we train at AWA every week and it will be just as big an advantage for us I think.

“The likelihood is they won’t bring hundreds of fans over with them. They might bring a few fans over, but it will be a very parochial Geelong crowd and we'll hopefully be able to use that to our advantage.”