BLUES AT THE DOUBLE FOR FLAG AMBITION
LAUNCESTON’S human bulldozer Jobi Harper says the honour of winning back-to-back premierships is a driving force among the Blues as they line up to face cross-town rival North Launceston in the TSL grand final at Windsor Park on Sunday.
The Launceston captain admires North Launceston for achieving it, and now wants to savour the taste of back-to-back flags.
The Bombers first did it in 2014-15, followed by a three-peat in 2017-18-19 as the only TSL team to achieve the feat.
Launceston wants consecutive titles.
“It would be huge,” Harper said.
“North Launceston has done it before – it’s hard to win one, it’s even harder to win two.
“We’ve opened the door and we’re going to give it our best shot.
“It would mean a lot to be able to win two in a row.”
First-time North Launceston captain Jay Foon (inset) has three grand finals under his belt, for one win and two losses.
“Losing last year left a bad taste in our mouth so it would be nice to redeem ourselves,” Foon said.
“We’ll back our kids to play with the instinctive flair that they have – there’s no point telling them to do too much or the structures can go out the window in a grand final.
“Whoever is prepared to back themselves in and put their head over it and win the hard football will get the result.
“We’ve had the week to freshen up, so we’ll be right to go with the team we had in the second semi.”
The loss of key forward Cody Thorp (suspended) means late changes for the Blues but that does not worry Harper.
“We’ve got layers of talented players on our list who can fill any role, so I’m not too concerned about our attack,” he said.
The loss to North Launceston gave the Blues a sneak peek at what to expect in the grand final.
“We’ve taken a fair bit out of that – you take as much as you can from any loss,” Harper said. “There are things we have taken from that game as well as games from earlier in the year.”
There was an air of quiet confidence at Windsor Park.
“Going into a grand final the team is pretty excited and up and about,” Harper said.
“We had a good win last week against Clarence and if you can’t get yourself up for grand final week you’re battling.
“We’ve got five or six young blokes who didn’t play in the grand final last year so they’re really excited, but we’re trying to prepare as normal.”