League Coach Report - Rd13 v East Perth

Last week's result in the seniors was very dissappointing in the end, as we now face a tough 9 weeks to make it to the finals.  Adam Cockie will miss the next 5 games as he has had surgery on his knee that he damaged during the third quarter and Phil Read will miss the next 4 weeks with work commitments.
We may have available the services of Greg Broughton and if we do I don't expect him for too long.  With other injured players there isn't to much light at the end of the tunnel.  Ben Heffernan-Roper should resume through the reserves but all others including Marc Webb, Rob Forrest, Jason Bristow, Scott Worthington, Steve Martin and Abe Davey who have all got impact injuries resulting in knee,shoulder or ankle problems.  Also Jake Wooden injured his hamstring at training last week after his debut and Josh Watson who has shin splints.
The list is long and includes many experienced players but we have been able to play some new talent this year and Todd Richards made a fine debut on the weekend and I am quite sure there will be another one this week.  All up we have put in about a dozen new players into the senior side in the first 11 games which shows we have a bit more depth than we might have thought at the start of the year.
Having said all that we set up to win early on the weekend and by quarter time we were only 3 points up and had far too many opportunities to blow them away and didn't take them.  It was a poor effort to let the game slip in the last 5 minutes and the players are very remoresful about it and know that if we don't improve quickly the season will pass us by.
This week is AFL bye weekend so we expect a big crowd to get behind us and cheer us on to hopefully a victory.