LIONS TO BARE CLAWS IN CHANCE TO ATONE

LEOPOLD will hold no fears when it takes on St Mary’s tomorrow, despite being shown up by the Saints a week ago in the final round of the home-and-away season.

The Lions could have ended St Mary’s year last week but fell by 33 points at Memorial Park, meaning the two sides will square off in an elimination final at GMHBA Stadium.

But Leopold coach Guy Morphet believes his players have moved on from the loss and says while the Saints will present a tough challenge, tomorrow’s game will be a different spectacle than last weekend.

“What I took out of it was they are a good side and they are coming good at the right time of the year,” Morphet said.

“They have a lot of speed, a lot of youth, but what I also took out of it was we were really poor. We have had an excellent week on the track this week and I couldn’t be happier with the way the boys have acquitted themselves and prepared.

“We had a very honest review on Tuesday night and went through a lot of areas we were down. I have been really happy with the week and where the boys are at and it is finals football, so we have done a lot of work through the season to get ourselves in this position and the boys have now just got to put it all in place.”

The Lions will make at least one change to the side that lost to St Mary’s, with skipper Sam Hughes all but resigned to missing the remainder of the 2019 season.

Morphet said there while there was a slim possibility his captain might make his way back into the team, it remained highly improbable, and instead he would now have a role to play on match day throughout September.

“Sam Hughes did his hamstring quite badly (against St Mary’s) so that is really disappointing for him because he is not only the captain of our club and a very good leader but an individual a lot of our guys respect,” he said.

“I would love to say I am optimistic but at this stage if I was being brutally honest, just seeing how bad he pulled up, I would say (he will not play) but you never rule anything out.

“He will get an MRI scan just to ascertain how bad it is but it looked like a pretty decent hamstring strain. We will still have a role for him and he speaks to the boys really well so we will use him in some capacity, whether that is down on the bench or up in the box, and he will add to what we are doing in finals.”