North to go down fighting
Warriors play for pride
NORTH Geelong coach James Coutts has backed his players to “keep fighting to the end” despite the Warriors’ dreams of promotion disappearing.
A 2-1 loss to Melbourne Victory at Epping Stadium stamped North’s papers for 2019 with the final two games of the season now being played for pride rather than a spot in Victoria’s top flight.
With their chances of promotion now ended, Coutts insists his side will continue to push to close out the season strongly.
“There are two games left. The one thing I know about this group is that they will keep fighting until the end,” Coutts said.
“We know now that it is pretty much it in terms of us being able to get promoted, which is a shame because that was obviously the target at the beginning of the season, but there are lots of factors as to why that will not be happening.
“We just need to dust ourselves down, get back to work as the boys have done since last November, it looks like we will be coming up a bit short so it is a hard one for the boys to take.”
Despite drawing level through Morgan Filer early in the second half against Victory, the Warriors could not convert their opportunities and were made to pay by their opposition.
Coutts said the result proved very frustrating for his side
“It is a hard result to take because the boys played some of the best football we have played all season, but when you do not take your chances like we did not today, then you are not going to win games,” he said.
“We got the ball so many times in their box today but lacked that cutting edge in front of goal, it does not matter what you do outside of either box and unfortunately today it summed up our season, we did not take our chances and we need to improve.
“Some of the football we played and the areas we got the ball to and played the game I was delighted with, but at the end of the day you have to take chances, and we just did not.
“Certain things today just did not go our way, you have to make your own luck in this game and we just didn’t convert our chances,” Coutts said.