Dahlhaus says team buzzing in lead up to September
GEELONG small forward Luke Dahlhaus says his teammates have taken plenty of confidence out of their performances in the past two weeks as they start to plan for September action.
The Cats outplayed North Melbourne at GMHBA Stadium a fortnight ago before falling in the last two minutes of last week’s clash against the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba.
But despite feeling flat in the immediate aftermath, Dahlhaus says Geelong has GMHBA STADIUM, TODAY, 4.35PM B HB C HF F R Int been up and about this week and is eager to finish the home-and-away season against Carlton with another strong outing ahead of finals.
“We’ve been pretty upbeat, I thought we played our way for the majority of the game against Brisbane,” he said.
“We take heaps of confidence from that, especially up there, it is always a pretty hard gig going up to the Gabba and especially with the form they are in, so we were pretty happy with it.
“Obviously the last quarter was pretty disappointing but Out Emg In Out we have reviewed that and moved on.
“I think the last two weeks, especially in the contest, we have been really good in finalslike games so we have been pretty happy with those performances. I wouldn’t say things have changed, but I would be lying if we didn’t have one eye on finals and we’re excited for that.
“I think the boys are pretty up and about.”
Dahlhaus laid 10 tackles against the Lions — his second highest tally this season — and will need to be prominent in that area of the game again against the Blues, with tackling machine and fellow small forward Tom Atkins ruled out with a hand injury.
The former Bulldog said he expected Zach Tuohy to once again play a role in attack and said the return of Gary Rohan would provide some relief for spearhead Tom Hawkins.
“We were obviously really happy with the early season form for us and we probably had a little bit of a bad patch there but we feel like we have got the same names down there and we are playing pretty well together,” he said.
“It hurts to lose Tommy (Atkins) but it is good to have Gary (Rohan) back. It helps Tom (Hawkins) and Esava (Ratugolea) with another tall, but in saying that it will be nice having Tommy Atkins back as well, because his pressure all year has been amazing.
“It will be pretty likely that he (Tuohy) will play there as well with Tommy going out.
“I thought Zach was pretty good last week and he did some really good things, so I don’t see why he wouldn’t start there this week.”