BROTHERS LEPRECHAUNS

LAST YEAR 2-14, 9th

THE YEAR AHEAD

IT hasn’t been an easy preseason for the Brothers club heading into 2018.

With a publicised plea for more players, through to training ground unavailability, not much has gone to plan for the Toowoomba-based side.

Coach Chris McEwan said his team had been working on skills, however there had been setbacks.

“We’ve been working on a lot of skill development. It’s unfortunate with the last 5-6 weeks in that we haven’t had access to a field or too many trials,” McEwan said.

“It’s very unknown. We don’t know much about the players as we haven’t had the chance to work long with them.”

On moving forward, McEwan said it was important for the young players in the side to play to the best of their abilities, particularly when coming up against the stronger teams in the competition.

“The big thing is it’s a young squad. We’ll give them simple tasks to perform without putting too much pressure on them,” he said.

“One area to improve on last year is defence. We have players in foreign positions, so we want to improve every week.”

PLAYERS TO WATCH

“Sam Betros has hopefully matured and can take some ownership of the side. We also have two young blokes, Blake Fletcher and Angus Ramsay, that we hope we can see develop and have a good year,” McEwan said. VERDICT It is going to be a tough year for Brothers. Their list doesn’t have the star power of other teams which will hurt them throughout the season.

I hope their situation is similar to that of Oakey’s in the sense they can derive benefits from 2018 to come back stronger than ever the following year.

PREDICTED FINISH 11th