NORTHERN Inland plan to fight size with mobility when the Bushrangers 15s and 17s kick off their Junior Gold Cup campaigns in Gunnedah tomorrow.
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Both sides are expecting their Hunter counterparts to physically outmatch them.
As they do most of the sides they’ll play.
It’s something they’ve accepted and worked out plans to combat.
“Most of the teams we play will be bigger than us and want to play a tight forward-orientated game,” head coach Morgan Martin said.
“We want to do the opposite – try to move them around the field.
“Hopefully that will counteract the fact that they will be physically bigger.”
He will be mainly looking after the 17s and feels the side is tailored to an expansive game.
“In the tight five we’ve got a lot of athletic, mobile and skilled young guys,” he said.
It’s his first year involved in the program and, while he’d like to pick up a win or two, he’s primarily focused on what they do on the field.
“Our goals are more process-wise than results- driven,” Martin said.
One of the areas they’ve paid a fair bit of attention to is defence.
“As a team, our principle is if teams are scoring tries against us they’re going to have to be good enough to get around us,” he said.
“We’ve done a lot of work on lower chop tackles.”
He’s got a few things in mind he’d like to see from the players both individually and as a unit.
For tomorrow getting the basics right will be a big focus.
“We don’t want to give away any cheap possession and we don’t want to be giving away too much cheap territory,” he said.
He also spoke about being competitive at the breakdown.
The 15s will be employing a similarly expansive game.
“We don’t want to get into an arm wrestle,” 15s head coach Jeff Watt said.
“We don’t want to be getting bogged down in a tussle in the narrow channels.”
They’ll be in action first at noon, with the 17s following at 1.30pm.