SEAGULLS coach Darren Winter is looking forward to playing in front of an expected big crowd for the standalone GFNL season opener against St. Joseph’s.
North Shore gets its campaign underway at Drew Oval on Saturday, with the match originally fixtured for Round 3 brought forward to not clash with St. Joseph’s ANZAC Day clash with South Barwon.
Winter said North Shore jumped up at the opportunity to get its season started early, while criticising the league’s decision to have the season start ‘proper’ on April 15.
“We wanted to play at the start of April.
“I don’t understand why we’d be playing mid-April as our first round, it makes no sense to me.
“The AFL have been playing for four or five weeks by the time we get to that stage.
“The VFL would’ve had three or four weeks.
“A lot of our clubs are feeder clubs to the VFL and those blokes probably haven’t had games for a period of time now.
“We actually always wanted to bring our games forward and we also tried to get one for Good Friday as well.”
READ: READ: GFNL – The Big Picture
Winter said it’ll be a challenging hitout to open the season, after a tough practice game against Joey’s a couple of weeks ago.
“St. Joey’s were very sharp, they moved the ball very quick.
“To be honest we struggled a little bit on the day, I think they ended up beating us by about 10 goals.
“The boys will need to certainly come with a different mindset to back themselves in and obviously put a little bit more pressure on then we did in the practice match.
“I think it’s a great day for the GFNL having a standalone game.
“Hopefully we can get a few people there and support both teams.
“And hopefully St. Joey’s can have a big day at the gate and the bar as a standalone game.”
GFNL SEASON OPENER
LISTEN: krockfootball.live
On-Air – 12:00pm
Bounce – 1:30pm
Commentators – Tom King, Jason Doherty
Experts – Matt Kershaw
Boundary – Jane Burch
Twitter: @krockfootball
