North Launceston faces a potential danger game on the road to North Hobart Oval on Saturday to play Hobart City in State League round 18.
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Following on from last week’s loss to Glenorchy wins in the final three rounds are imperative for the Northern Bombers as they chase a top-two finish come finals.
North defeated the Demons by six points in round 9 at Aurora Stadium but were made to fight hard for victory in a close contest.
“Every game at this end of season is obviously super important but when you look at this – Hobart City we lost to last year down there and only just beat up here this year which makes it a tough game,” North coach Zane Littlejohn said.
“Then we have Lonnie cross-town rivals and Burnie in the last round before the bye so we have a pretty challenging run home which we welcome and look forward to the challenge and we will learn a lot about our group.
“The beauty is if we win three games we will claim second spot and don’t have to rely on other people to lose or draw or win – we control it and that’s how we like to play and we have to make sure we do the right things to look after that.”
Littlejohn said their review of the Glenorchy game showed the Bombers were not good enough doing the basics of footy in the second half of the game.
“We weren’t in the position we wanted to be but full credit to Glenorchy who made us make mistakes and they lifted their tackling rate and were really good to put us under that pressure,” he said.
“It has been a while for the group since they had their last loss which was Glenorchy last time so we have to make sure we learn from it and that’s been the biggest message to the group – we lose but we don’t call it a loss we call it a learning opportunity.
“We will learn a lot from it and make sure our less experienced players do learn and our coaching group and leaders around the club have driven that this week.”
He said his side needed to tighten up on their ball movement and tackling this week and ``the little basic things of the game” that don’t require a player to have the football in hand.
“Hobart City are really balanced with guys who can win the footy inside and speed on the outside and they will be a challenging side for the remainder of this year and in years to come.”
Seventeen-year old Karlton Wadley will play his first senior game for the club and Jay Foon will notch up senior game number 50.