Geelong Cats V Melbourne Tigers

Saturday March 21, 7.30pm @ The Arena

Geelong coach Darren Busuttil said despite losing five of their seven players from last season, his team was ready for this weekend’s battle-of the-two cities against Melbourne.

Busuttil said the Cats as a result had a very young roster and had “pretty much had a full make-over.”

But amongst the young players, Geelong have managed to recruit an American import in Audrey Muse - but the athletic player, who can suit-up for a two position through to a five, won’t arrive until April 18.

“I think that we got caught napping a little bit,” Busuttil said.

 “I think this year is more of a steep learning curve for us - there’s a few girls who didn’t get much court time last year and they will be taking the next step.

“This is an opportunity for some players to show us what they can do... the first few weeks are going to be a bit of a gauge, but our aim is to improve, regardless of what the score is.”

Busuttil said he thought his young team would struggle against the top three or four teams – with the average age of his team in the low 20s.

Melbourne will similarly sport a young team in 2009, with the loss of the experience of Michelle Brogan to be felt.

“We have a very young roster this year, but it’s giving the younger kids the opportunity to step up and show us what they’ve got,” coach Sarah Nobbs said.

“We’ve always been about promoting our junior players at the Tigers and providing them with a pathway to get to college and the WNBL.”

Nobbs said with the loss of both Sandringham and Dandenong, she saw the Tigers falling within the middle of the State Championship group and would be pushing for a finals berth again this season.

“It’s all a little unknown at the moment, we don’t know what teams have got and what happened in the off-season, but for us it depends on how our young kids respond to the level of physicality playing against older and more experience players.”

Nobbs said she was aware Geelong had lost a the majority of their players in the off-season, but had confidence in the ability of their juniors to perform.

“We’ll just go in with a bit of confidence and stick to our games plan and hopefully come up with the win,” Nobbs said.