NORTON BIG ASK FOR HEUIR
ANOTHER away game: this time in Toowoomba against SWQ Thunder.
We can expect cold conditions and a challenging game ahead of us.
Even though SWQ hasn’t won a game this season, they’ve come oh- so- close on a few occasions.
At this level, no game is an easy game, and everyone has a chance of winning on a given day.
That goes for us playing top sides, as much as it goes for SWQ against every team they’ve met so far this season.
I know that our boys have got what it takes to win. If we keep playing the way we did last week, we’ll do so. I was really pleased with last week’s performance.
We’re back to playing the way we started off the season: playing decent football and playing through the lines, not booting the ball up one end of the park from the other.
But with any game, there’s no room for complacency. I keep urging the boys to focus, have the right attitude, win the individual battles on the park and earn the right to win.
In this regard, I’ve been pleased with the way young Hamish Cassady has responded at left back.
Ben Stanley is doing a great job for us in the middle of the park as a number 10. Our “elder statesman” goalkeeper, Dan Wilesmith, has pulled off some great saves.
And the ever- reliable Jacob Crowley and Ari Isman give us 100 per cent effort every game.
TOWNSVILLE junior Damon Heuir likes to prove himself against established National Basketball League players.
And it won’t get any tougher than tonight’s assignment when the Cairns Marlins guard meets Townsville’s Mitch Norton.
Heuir is no stranger to matching up against his hometown QBL club, having played with Mackay last year, and faces a stern individual test against Crocodiles point guard Norton.
The 24- year- old is a devel- opment player with the Crocs’ NBL rivals Cairns Taipans and his former teammates expect him to relish the opportunity to try and show he also belongs in the country’s top league.
“I know Damon pretty well from his junior days back in Townsville and I know he’s going to want to try and prove himself against Mitch,” Heat coach Rod Anderson said.
Heuir is just one of a few attacking weapons with NBL experience the Marlins boast, with Nathan Sobey and Corey Maynard also posting strong numbers this year. Sobey looms as the biggest danger to a Heat side needing to keep winning to be any chance of making QBL finals and defensive specialist Corban Wroe is set to earn that defensive assignment.
“Sobey has got a little bit of NBL experience and he has the ball in his hands more than anyone else in that team and he can make the big shots,” Anderson said. In a strange set of QBL rostering for the Heat and women’s counterparts Townsville Flames, they will meet Cairns in the Far North tonight before returning to face off in Townsville next week.