Jack Frost had little time to prepare for his debut. Picture: Scott Chris Source: HWT Image Library
COLLINGWOOD coach Nathan Buckley admitted he had his doubts about his team's capacity to overcome the loss of several key players before last night's impressive 16-point win against North Melbourne.
Already without the likes of Dale Thomas, Luke Ball, Alex Fasolo, Alan Didak and Clinton Young, Collingwood lost Dayne Beams to a quad injury before the game and Heath Shaw to a bout of food poisoning 30 minutes prior to the bounce.
The two late withdrawals handed Jack Frost and Josh Thomas unexpected AFL debuts.
In the case of Frost, he had no idea he was only minutes away from playing his first game when he arrived at the ground.
"I just had my polo on outside and then all of a sudden they said 'yeah, you're in','' Frost said.
"I had two minutes to get taped, get everything on, do a tiny little warm up that went for about 10 seconds and then I ran out. That was it. I wasn't ready for that one.''
It's a debut the 21-year-old rookie elevation had been waiting for for years, but it came in an instant.
The key defender didn't even know whether his parents had been at the ground to see him play.
"Daisy (Dale Thomas) actually came up to me in the rooms and said 'do your parents know?'
"I had no idea, so I told him where my phone was but I'm not sure if he even got on to them. I hope they were there.''
Josh Thomas (18 possessions, seven clearances) at least had a little extra time to prepare after being told on Saturday that Beams wasn't right.
"Beamsy hurt himself at training yesterday arvo, so I didn't really have too much time to think about it thankfully.'' Thomas, 21, said.
"I was pretty nervous though because I've been dreaming about this day for a while.''
A third debutant, Sam Dwyer, was the Pies substitute and came on at half time after Ben Johnson copped a cork to his thigh.
Buckley was full of praise for his undermanned team after the game.
"Coming in to it we had concerns about personnel I suppose and were wondering whether we had lost too much quality to be able to play the way that we did tonight,
"But the fact is it's not just the talent level of a team that gets you wins it's the actual effort and perseverance (of the players) and the application to their roles.
"I thought it was a great win.''
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Debtant Frost comes in cold
Dengan url
http://astagaberita.blogspot.com/2013/03/debtant-frost-comes-in-cold.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Debtant Frost comes in cold
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar