Joeys aim to be hunters

ST JOSEPH’S coach Heath Jamieson believes his side is peaking at the right time of the year, but faces a mighty challenge in tomorrow’s preliminary final against minor premier Leopold.

The Lions lost just one game in the regular season before copping a heavy defeat to St Mary’s last weekend in the second semi-final.

Jamieson said the Lions’ campaign was reminiscent of his side’s 2017 year and he expected Guy Morphet’s team to be breathing fire tomorrow.

“I think they’ve been the form side of the competition all year, not only winning games but the way they’ve won games,” he said.

“We were probably in a similar position to them last year where the first final didn’t go to plan and you revisit what you’re good at I suppose.

“We expect them to come out full of fire on the weekend; there’s no doubting it’s going to be a tough, pretty difficult game for our footy club.

“They’ve got some serious players in every line, so we’re under no illusion how dangerous they are as a side. Our aim will be to ensure they don’t get their game going. We’ll bring the heat and hopefully it’s a good game of footy.”

Jamieson said he was pleased with his side’s recent form, with wins over Bell Park and South Barwon in the last three weeks.

“I think the last few weeks have been pretty good,” he said.

“It’s all about peaking at the right time; you don’t need to peak too early in this season and one thing we’ve always been mindful of is, after the premiership year in 2015, the 2016 year I think we were going too early.

“We’ve pulled the handbrakes on this year and people probably think we’ve fallen away a bit, but we’ve seen some signs over the last couple of weeks that are pointing us in a positive direction.

“We’ll give ourselves every opportunity on Saturday to have a good day.”

And Jamieson believes his side has the flexibility to find a way to beat Leopold, having trialled players in different positions throughout the season.

“As a group, you don’t want to be predictable to play against,” he said.

“One thing that does happen when you’re a side that’s up the top of the ladder for a fair while, you can become pretty easy to play against.

“We probably thought midway through the year, that was starting to happen — sides had put a lot of time into us and probably worked out how best to play against us.

“As a coaching group and a playing group, we probably had to revisit a few things and change a few things up. Time will tell whether those things will work.” LEOPOLD v ST JOSEPH’S