Warriors weigh up options over star’s report

MODEWARRE’S crushing second semi-final defeat has been further soured by the report of star Mitch Fisher.

Fisher, who was returning from injury, was booked in the second quarter for his bump on Barwon Heads’ Sam Evans.

Fisher was offered a twomatch set penalty for engaging in rough conduct.

The Warriors are almost certain to challenge the ban, which will end his season.

AFL Barwon’s Match Review Panel will also assess the incident, with the ability to downgrade the severity if necessary or throw it out.

Any suspension will be costly for Modewarre, who could be without one of the competition’s elite ball winners for the preliminary final and potentially the grand final.

Warriors’ assistant coach Chris Carlon was confident Fisher had nothing to worry about.

“To me, he protected himself as the guy (Evans) came in to get the footy and it didn’t look too high to me,” Carlon said.

“We’re pretty confident he’s OK.”

Modewarre was left to lament a lacklustre showing, with the Seagulls rarely headed in the 63-point win.

“It’s bitterly disappointing,” Carlon said. “We feel we’re a lot better than what we put up today (Saturday). We were definitely disappointed with the effort.

“They jumped us early and we set a really high standard in terms of contested footy and our workrate around the contest and we definitely let ourselves down.

“We were probably going at half rate, considering how we’ve been playing and we just had to step it up there and unfortunately we couldn’t get it done.”

Admitting his team was well down on its best, Carlon wasn’t prepared to sugar-coat the performance.

“We need to be minimum 30 per cent better than we were,” he said.

“We didn’t do enough. We had opportunities where we could’ve broken the game open and changed things up, and there were flashes where we showed how well we could play, but we didn’t do it for long enough.”

The Warriors were picked apart by the Seagulls, who had the benefit of watching last week’s match against Anglesea.

“I just think they covered all bases,” Carlon said.

“They definitely did their homework on how we’ve been playing the last five or six weeks and we just didn’t quite adapt the way we wanted to.”

Flat inside the changerooms, Carlon said his charges simply had to move on.

“You could go pretty hard on them, but I don’t think you need to,” he said.

“Internally we know our workrate wasn’t up to standard, we didn’t work hard enough for long enough and all credit to them, they finished on top and were the best side all year.

With the Warriors’ reserves moving straight through to the grand final, Carlon said a handful of players were pushing for spots in the senior team.

“There’s four or five guys who could come forward,” he said.