Thursday, 27 February 2014

Rangers Well Into Preseason

Dane Hudson will take charge of our Premier League boys this week as Tim Lunnon and myself commence the C licence this Sunday, so the boys are in good hands.  Our side has been selected with a balance of our core U20 players, with a game given to a select victory league group who desperately need the run in preparation for the season.

Marshall Pooley comes back in this week after a week off last week, and this game will be used to help fast track the preparation for our Englishmen Shane Brassington and Adam Edwards, who up until they arrived have not been able to kick a ball outside since before Christmas back in the UK due to the weather.

Last week was a great game, Launceston took it right up to us, but the guys stayed patient and kept to our game plan, and it was the younger boys that actually made the difference for us last week, Harry Thannhauser was just outstanding, and looks to have locked himself into the Victory League 20 now, which is announced next week.

I understand Launceston were upset as we played a few boys again from the day before in our game last week, but I think most clubs understand that the Hudson Cup is a series of competitive practice matches, we are not in this comp to win it, but to prepare for the season, we will play within the rules that state we can play up to 5 over 20 players each week, against an opposition who have no restrictions, I think last week we may have played 3 over 20 age players, and only one of them we expect to feature in our Victory league make up,  we are not interested in stacking a team so that we can win the Hudson Cup, rather fine tuning our squads for the start of the Premier League and Victory League, and some of our boys need to play to get fit, others need to play so that we know come season start, where they fit in the scheme of things.

So nothing changes this week against City, I expect they will field a team that represents their preparation, but we will be focusing on ours, and if we finish up with a win, that will be a nice fuzzy feeling for 15 minutes, and then its back to preparation for the 28th of March.

The fact that we are out of the Summer Cup is disappointing and as a result, my Premier league sides preparation will be disrupted, but that's life and we searched for a Victory League Practice match for Saturday, but unfortunately our opposition had to withdraw at late notice, so this is all we have this week

1 comment: