Westbury will be on the hunt for its first win of the season this weekend when it hosts Mowbray in the second round of the Greater Northern Cup.
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Having showed some positive signs in a round 1 loss to premiers South Launceston, the Shamrocks will go in confident against a side full of young talent.
“It’s a little bit of an unknown with Mowbray this year,” Westbury skipper Richard Howe said.
“They’ve lost a couple of players and picked up a couple of players, so we’re going to go to the game fairly confident but we’ll see how we go,” Howe said.
“We need to be wary of a couple of their dangerous players, John Le Fevre and young (Jarrod) Freeman at the top there with the ball and they’ve got a couple of unknowns there as well.”
Strike bowler Jono Chapman has been confirmed as one of two outs for the Shamrocks, with Nathan Parkin expected to line up in his first game for the season.
“We’ll probably go in a bowler down but we’ll be looking to some of the guys like Nathan and Jake Williams to fill that role of the fifth bowler this week.”
The match will be Mowbray’s first hit-out for the season having sat out with the bye last weekend.
Opening bowling duo Jack and Casey Young will both be missing from the SOUTH LAUNCESTON side preparing to take on Launceston at the NTCA no.1 ground.
Knights skipper Alec Smith said Jeremy Smith and Sean Harris would step up to play their first games of the season against an up-and-coming Lions side.
“(We’ll take some) confidence from the way we played in the first round but Launny are a good improving team so we’ll have to play well no doubt,” Smith said.
“They’ve got a couple of match-winners like Alistair Taylor who’s a really good batsman and a new spinner from Hobart as well who apparently bowls quite well, so they’ve got a few people who could win the match for them so we’ll have to try and make sure we blunt their performances.”
Launceston will make a change of its own with Lachie Newland replacing the unavailable Dom Rawlings, who took three wickets last weekend.
New skipper Taylor said his side would not be drawn into narrowing its focus to Smith’s unbeaten knock of 155 last weekend, preferring to tackle the Knights as a team of 11 individuals.
“We’re just going to be focusing on the basics again, we didn’t quite get that right last week against Riverside,” Taylor said.
“That’s going to be the big focus, just keep it really simple and really basic against a very good team.”
Riverside has the bye.