COBURG vs NORTH MELBOURNE – Sunday 1pm @ Piranha Park
[VFL website LIVE STREAM / VFL Live]
LAST ENCOUNTER
Never played.
FORM COMING IN
Coburg has faded out of each of its games, suffering big losses to the Casey Demons, Footscray and then the Box Hill Hawks. North Melbourne followed up its inaugural VFL win against the Northern Blues with a close loss to Frankston last week.
KEY QUESTIONS
Will Coburg take a leaf out of Frankston’s book? The Dolphins demonstrated what a young group can do when they apply themselves for a full four quarters in their 16-point triumph over the Kangaroos last week. While the Lions have proven competitive in their three losses, they’ve let opposition teams get too much of a run-on at times.
Will North Melbourne prove too tall? The Kangaroos will likely boast 206cm ruckman Braydon Preuss as well as Michael Close, Sam Durdin, Nick Larkey, Ben McKay and Tristan Xerri as tall attacking options. Preuss will take on Coburg captain Tom Goodwin in the middle, while Sean Gregory will have his hands full in defence.
HOME CLUB’S PERSPECTIVE
Coburg senior coach Leigh Adams on the lessons learnt from three big losses to start the season:
“It’s about our consistency and trying to do what we want to do for the full four quarters. We seem to stick to our structures or defend well in patches, but when we drop off it seems to be a fair drop off indeed. We don’t want to use (our generally young group) as an excuse, but a lot of our boys hadn’t played VFL footy before this year so we knew there were going to be some inconsistent efforts at times… We’ve had 11 debutants this year.”