By Connor Schmidtke
The other team fighting to avoid relegation from Division Three this week is the Scoresby Magpies, who face Fairpark on Saturday with the loser to drop back into Division Four next season.
Scoresby have been competitive this year with some of the top teams, but have only managed to convert this into four wins. The Magpies have lost three games by under two goals, failing to make the most of their season defining games.
The lack of wins has now left Scoresby in a precarious spot, needing to beat Fairpark this weekend to ensure they remain in Division Three next season.
The Magpies got away to a reasonable start in 2022, splitting their first eight games for four wins, including a big win over Warrandyte. But their form dropped off following their second bye in round 12, with the ‘Pies now needing to snap a seven-game losing streak to avoid the drop.
Despite the ups and downs of the season, head coach Kristian Bardsley remains focused on the positives of the 2022 campaign for his team.
“We think we’ve had a positive year.
“We lost 12 of our best 22 players from last year, including a league best and fairest winner. So, we knew we would be in the start of a rebuilding phase this year.
“We’ve been competitive in most games except the last couple of weeks, we’ve just fallen away a little bit. We won four games and lost three games we probably should have won, so overall we think we’ve had a positive year.
“We look back and say we’ve won four and hopefully five on the weekend and remain positive considering where we started.”
Having comfortably beaten Fairpark earlier in the season, the Magpies will take confidence from their first clash with the Lions as they try to end the season on a positive note.
Coach Bardsley believes that it won’t be an easy game, but thinks that if his side can play at their best, it should be enough.
“We just need to get our hands on the footy first and defend well.
“Fairpark have been playing reasonably well, they beat Whitehorse a couple weeks ago at home. It won’t be an easy game but if we can play our best footy and we play the style we need to play, we’re a big chance of winning.
“It’s a situation where both teams want to win and the team that execute best on the day will get the chocolates.”
With the rebuild underway this year, Scoresby will be keen to improve further over the off-season to make sure they keep up with the big teams.
Bardsley said that recruiting and development of younger players will be key for the Magpies next year.
“We need to recruit, we need to get some quality players in. We need to make sure the players we have now, we continue to develop them and get them better.
“We need to make sure we can get more players on the track early on to get a better fitness base, so we can perform at our optimal level.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have under-19’s coming through, so that will hurt us. But having said that, we do have a lot of kids that have played seniors this year that have taken gigantic steps forward, and we need to make sure we continue to develop them.
“It’s going to be all about getting numbers on the track and getting the work in.”
