Skipper sweats on Berry reprieve
BRISBANE Lions captain Dayne Zorko says teammate Jarrod Berry deserves to play in Friday night’s AFL preliminary final against Geelong at the MCG.
Berry was superb in the second half of Brisbane’s 13-point win over Melbourne, with his on-ball performance and tagging job on Clayton Oliver swinging last Friday’s contest in the Lions’ favour.
However, Berry has been hit with a one-week ban by the match review officer for making contact to Oliver’s face.
The Lions are challenging Berry’s charge in the hope of having the midfielder available to take on the Cats.
Zorko on Monday said it was hard for him to comment on the issue but “you’d like to think he’ll play”.
“You’d love to see him take his spot – he thoroughly deserves it,” the Lions skipper said of Berry.
“It didn’t look like there was anything in it for mine, but everyone sees it differently.”
Zorko was lavish in his praise of Berry.
“I haven’t seen a Lions player play a better half,” he said. “He didn’t overcomplicate things.”
Zorko was proud of the spirit Brisbane showed against the Demons and said another fighting display would be needed against Geelong if the Lions were to reach a grand final for the first time since losing the 2004 decider to Port Adelaide.
“They (the Cats) are in an incredible vein of form. All of their players are at the absolute top of their games at the moment, and no doubt they’re going to be refreshed,” he said.
“We just need to bring what we brought (last) Friday night and if we can do that, we’re certainly going to be in the game
“If you hang in there long enough, you just don’t know what can happen. That’s the spirit we’ll be going down with, and hopefully we can get the job done.”
Zorko intends to lead by example in terms of applying pressure to Geelong.
“If we bring that pressure … if I can set the tone or have an impact in that area. hopefully that can spur another bloke to do the same thing and we can get a similar result to what we did (last) Friday night,” he said.
“We’ve got so many fantastic, young emerging players coming through.
“For me it’s just about guiding them around the park, and filling in when I need to and understanding the moments, and what I need to do at any given time.
“At times I’ve probably got that wrong this year, but I thought especially (last Friday against Melbourne) I was able to get those moments right, and I’ll be looking for a similar performance this Friday.”