Coaches' corner: Parrots full of respect for “well drilled” Warragul

YOU’D have to say, nearing the halfway point in the Gippsland League season that the two undefeated teams, Moe and Warragul, are in pole position to appear in this year’s grand final.

But, over the next couple of weeks, we’ll get an even better idea about which team is favourite and which other sides might still mount a challenge.

This coming Saturday, Moe hosts Warragul at Gaskin Park in Churchill to decide top spot, and Leongatha makes the trip to Wonthaggi with third place on the ladder at stake.

Speaking after last Saturday’s drawn game at Warragul, coaching for the first time against Gary Ayres, his former mentor at Port Melbourne, Parrots’ coach Trent McMicking on some of the similarities in the game plans of the two sides, but he wasn’t surprised.

Across an eight-year term as the Borough’s development coach, Trent stepped up and took the reins of the senior side in April 2019, when Ayres was laid up in hospital and did a pretty fair job.

• What did you make of that?

I'm probably disappointed. That’s the first word that comes to mind, but also proud of our second half. We probably haven't played that bad in the second quarter. We were quite undisciplined, and I thought they were just a far better side. They made the most of their moments. Really disappointed with that goal kicking, obviously the kicking. We had 13 more scoring shots, I think, or something like that. Yeah, they kicked 12.1 so credit to them. None of our tall forwards kicked a goal today, no, sorry, they kicked one each. And we didn't take any marks in our forward 50, which is a battle, again credit to them. In the second half, we looked better up for second half. So, just a whole lot of little things,

• So, clearly there’s been a lot of improvement in Warragul. You’d expect them to be thereabouts at the end?

Yeah, I think we've been across that, I mean they’re just so well drilled. They’ve got good to great players on every line, so they’re going to be hard to beat. They put up a good fight today. Things probably rolled their way a little bit more than ours, which is footy, and they gave themselves a great chance to win at half time. Yeah, I must say, credit to our boys, great third quarter, you know but then the last quarter, we just didn't kick a goal.

• And were you more aware of your strategies today, opposite Ayresy?

No, I wouldn’t say that although I thought we both played a similar way. I thought the way the game was set up, you know, there was a lot of similarities. I mean we spent eight years together, so I think lots of ideas are similar. Yeah, so eight years of working together probably shows you're going to play a pretty similar style of footy, and I thought that showed today. Our wingers and high forwards were really similar, yeah.