By Lachlan Mitchell
Narre South Saints are 1-1 heading out of the Easter break and after a promising start the boys from Strathaird Reserve are fighting strong.
The Saints held off a fast-finishing Clayton in round one to run out 36-point victors at home.
One of the south-east’s finest forwards, Steven Sigeti, booting four in the opener.
Narre South couldn’t emulate its round-one form against Black Rock, falling 51 points short at Macdonald Reserve.
The Saints struggled to kick a goal until the third term, kicking six behinds in the first half.
A Brandon Nolan double wasn’t enough to see his side home.
Narre Saints coach Scott Mackenzie is optimistic the loss was only a stumble after losing a number of players due to Covid and injuries.
“I’m not panicked, we had a few out of the club last week including myself, it wasn’t a great week for the club,” he said.
“It was a bit of a hiccup, but it’s given us a pretty good overview of what we did wrong.
“It gives us something to fix, round one was great but it was very different how we presented on the following week.
“We have stuff to work on, and we know that we will bounce back after Easter and I have no doubt about that.
“I have watched the replay about three times since I’ve been in quarantine. Black Rock is a very good team.
“Our structures are sound when we do them, it was pretty obviously our procedures weren’t structured well at all.
“We got a broken hand out of the game against Black Rock, and fractured ribs, and there’s a few niggles.
“We will hopefully get numbers back and be more settled into next week and turn things around.”
Mackenzie is optimistic his side will turn it around and be a competitive team in a very high standard of football.
“We’re under no illusion that this season is going to be tough,“ he explained.
“There have been some blowouts, definitely and to be honest we were on the wrong side of one as well, but I think the top five or six sides are going to be very hard-pressed this year.
“It’s going to be a very hard top-four to get into. I think it’s going to be the hottest contested competition in Southern this year.
“We had players out against Black Rock and it’s hard to get a gauge of where teams are at.
“Certainly Murrumbeena are the ones to watch, but unless you know the ins and outs of the club each week with Covid it’s a bit of guesswork.“
Murrumbeena had a thumping 240-point win over South Yarra with the competition favourites restricting the Lions to just one goal.
