Morphet confident Leopold won’t put in a second finals flop

LEOPOLD coach Guy Morphet says his team will have underachieved if it suffers a straight-sets finals exit at the hands of St Joseph’s today.

The Lions lost just one game en route to the minor premiership, before last weekend’s second semi-final loss to St Mary’s.

Morphet said his team, which had six players named in the GFL coaches’ team of the year on Wednesday night, two weeks in a row,” he said.

“We had a really honest review Tuesday night, it was all positive, and this group is driven, they’re a really driven group.

“We know what we’ve got to do, we’re not looking any further ahead of our challenge this week — and it will be a challenge — but we are confident we can get the job done.”

But the coach of the year said a loss would mark this season as a fail.

“Yeah I think so, if I’m honest. I’m not going to sit here and lie about that,” Morphet said.

“We’ve won 17 home-andaway games and it would certainly be disappointing, but I’m really confident we can get the job done.

“We were just a bit disappointing, but reflecting on it, we were so down on the weekend. I don’t think the week off was great. It was good to freshen up, but we were just flat-footed. We had no movement.

“St Mary’s played a really good style of football, as they do, and as I said to the guys, ‘If you come to a final and don’t bring intent, you’re going to get beaten more times than not’.

“To only get done by four goals, you take a lot of positives out of that. While it’s not ideal, we had a good review and we’re pretty happy with where we’re heading.”

Morphet said he was humbled to be named coach of the year and was proud of the six Lions — Marcus and Jai Thompson, Trent West, Tom Ruggles, Billy Smedts and Brandon Howarth — selected in the team of the year.

“It certainly wasn’t something that was on my radar and there’s a lot of good coaches in this league, so it’s something I’m very proud of,” he said.

“It probably just shows where our footy club is at — to have six players named in the team of the year is a great effort.

“(But) obviously our focus is still on where we want to head at the end of the year.”