By JARROD POTTER
TAC CUP PREVIEW – PRELIMINARY FINAL
BRINGING big guns to the south-east versus east TAC Cup battle – Dandenong welcomes back two national champions into its already burgeoning preliminary final line-up against Eastern Ranges.
After recovering from illness and injury respectively, Brandon White and Kurt Mutimer will add a lot more hard-edge to the defensive-50 and midfield – another piece of good news for Stingrays coach Craig Black ahead of the final-four clash.
“It’s always great to get two players back of that calibre,” Black said. “They’ve played nationals where the intensity is up and some of those nationals are like playing finals.”
After fine-tuning and finessing the line-up through the last two months, Dandenong has finally reached the apex of its powers – putting onto the park its most potent line-up yet this season.
With last week off, after a nail-biting victory over Murray Bushrangers, the Stingrays have prepared strongly for the penultimate clash of the 2015 season.
“We trained, looked after the boys the first week – thought they worked really hard in the qualifying final and we did the recovery required,” Black said.
“We didn’t just sit back and have free time – Thursday night trained for half-hour and then took them to the movies – but this week the training has been as normal and we couldn’t have prepared any better for this match.”
The only question mark remains over Mitch Cox (flu) with the Narre in-and-under midfielder trying to get back up in time for Saturday.
Dandenong won’t need to battle any monster forwards this weekend, with Eastern’s attack more suited to fast-paced in-and-under football, but Black isn’t underestimating his smaller opponents and knows he can switch up the Rays’ game-plan at a moment’s notice.
“They’ve got some really good quality players – midfield runs really hard and they have the leading goal kicker (Blake Hardwick) in the competition,” Black said.
“They’re a young team, with some 16 and 17 year-old players who play exciting and take the game on.
“They don’t have the big forwards as Murray did or Geelong did, but they’ve been kicking winning scores and they spread their load well.
We can change it up if we need to – Weitering can go up, Collins kicked two goals against Western, White can go forward, so can Cappy (Capiron) and Ricey loves to kick a few goals – we’ve got a lot of dual position players and that’s what can win finals.”
The true glimpse of Dandenong’s strength comes from the selected extended bench, as any of those players have been first-22 selections throughout this year.
“When you have to leave some players out it’s always tough,” Black said.
“When we were discussing it at selection this week, it was about ‘how could we leave that player out’ but also ‘how we can get them in’ – all this year we’ve been really happy with our depth and anyone of the 27-28 players I’m quite comfortable with.
“I know our team is really comfortable with whoever they line up next to and everyone knows they can get it done.”
Winner takes all in this clash, with Dandenong or Eastern set to battle North Ballarat or Oakleigh in the TAC Cup grand final, held this year at Etihad Stadium on Sunday 27 September from 11.05am.
“If we manage to win this week we’ve got good players that are missing out,” Black said.
“So the pressure to perform is on the players and that’s why they’ve performed really well all this year – they know there’s someone just as good waiting to get a chance.”
But before the Stingrays can think about the last day of the season, they’ll need to overcome the Ranges on Saturday morning from 11.15am at Princes Park, Carlton.
DANDENONG STINGRAYS LINE-UP – PRELIMINARY FINAL
B: Glen, Collins, Capiron.
HB: Rice, Weitering, WHITE.
C: Jok, Holden, MUTIMER.
HF: Roscoe, Freeman, Williams.
F: Battle, Young, Gladman.
R: Nyuon, Lovett, Batten.
Int (from): Poholke, Cox, McKay, Di Pasquale, Prior, Z. Rouse, Pickess, Bubb, Hulett.
IN: White, Mutimer.
OUT: N/A.
