NEWTOWN & Chilwell coach David Wojcinski concedes his side’s problems are “above the shoulders” as the Eagles slumped to a second-successive defeat.
“I’m very disappointed,” Wojcinski said after the 51-point defeat to Leopold.
“We were disappointed with last week’s result as well. We thought we’d put in a much better effort this week but unfortunately it wasn’t the case.
“I’m not too sure what the go is at the moment. I’ll have to go back and have a look at the tape and go back to the boys and see where we’re at because the last two weeks have been disappointing.”
The Eagles were opened up in the first term — trailing by 36 points at quarter time — and never recovered.
“Their defensive pressure was quite good, it really put our guys under the pump,” Wojcinski said.
“Their spread from the contest was excellent, ours was poor. We’ve got a lot of things to work on and we’re a long way off our best footy at the moment.
“I just hope over the bye we can regroup and get back to basics, back to how we played last year because we had a reasonable year and what we did was concentrate on the basics and we’ve gone away from that.”
Asked where he felt the Eagles were going wrong, Wojcinski said: “It is definitely above the shoulders”.
“There’s a few other things as well and losing Fez (Dan Feery) before the game didn’t help,” he said.
“He’s our captain and his leg just didn’t come up and we missed him but one player doesn’t make a team.
“But again we had a reasonably strong side in and unfortunately it didn’t show out that way.
“I’m really confident we can turn it around. Once we get back to basics and do the things that made us a good side last year, we’ll be scaring sides again.”
Lions coach Steve Clark says his side is “not getting ahead of themselves” after a thumping win over a premiership contender.
“The one thing that this group is really good at is we just worry about what we do on a football field,” Clark said.
“A lot of what people think and a lot of what people say is most of the time irrelevant and uneducated because they haven’t seen us play.
“They look at what’s been written in the paper and think ‘gee, Leopold must be struggling, they only just beat North Shore, but if you look at their results again today, North Shore has really improved.
“You can only control what you can control inside the four walls and I think that’s one of our strengths. This group is enormous, I can’t talk them up highly enough in regards to that.”
The Lions announced themselves as a genuine threat with Saturday’s dismantling of Newtown.
“I just thought we won the contested footy, which was a big part of today’s win,” Clark said.
“We tend to spread pretty well and I thought we defended really well. Our work when we didn’t have the ball was as good as I’ve seen it.
“That part of our game wasn’t 100 per cent last week but today that’s as good as I’ve seen us defend the footy.”
GFL SCORES:
Bell Park 9.8.62 v Colac 16.11.107
Grovedale 12.11.83 v St Joseph’s 13.16.94
Newtown & Chilwell 8.13.61 v Leopold 18.4.112
South Barwon 12.14.86 v GWSP 7.8.50
St Albans 22.21.153 v Lara 4.9.33
St Mary’s 12.14.86 v North Shore 8.11.59
Last Modified on 01/05/2015 16:46