THE wait is over for the Bathurst Bushrangers and the road to redemption begins tomorrow in the Central West AFL when they take on their grand final conquerors the Orange Tigers in the opening match of the season.
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The memories of the Bushrangers’ loss in the last match of 2013 will linger, given it was only their second defeat in two years and one that came at the worst time possible.
But a new year brings a chance to put that result behind them and heralds plenty of changes for the Bathurst club, most notably the introduction of new coach Brett Archer.
The season gets underway for the Bushrangers at 2.30pm tomorrow at Bloomfield Oval and must face an Orange side running hot off the back of a 155-point drumming of Cowra.
Archer believes it would have been nice to avoid the toughest possible match first up, but expects a close affair after his side’s round one bye.
“Still a work in progress, but it’s looking good. We’ve got eight debutants and that corresponds to how many players we lost last year, but all of the new guys are really good players,” he said.
“It’s hard to gauge where we’re at. It would have been nice to ease our way into the competition. Hopefully it’s going to be a close game, though. Every time we played each other last year it was always a great contest.”
The side has suffered departures of some key players from last season including Sebastian Matheson, Mitch Cameron, Nathan Belbin and Leigh Kingwill.
Archer believes the side is still working towards their best, but is confident he has the new players to fill the void.
“There’s still some lingering injury problems, so the team we’ve got isn’t quite 100 per cent. All 42 players would be pushing for a first grade spot. That’s one of our goals, when rebuilding from last year, that we have a good pool for rotation,” he said.
“Tom Regan is coming here from uni. He’s looked great at training and I’ve got no problems putting him into the first grade team. Jack Allars is new to the club and he’s been great in trials. Andrew Grinter is a Victorian boy. His ball skills are very good and I’m hoping he’ll kick a few goals.”
One word that had been thrown around before by Archer was ‘experimenting’ and finding the strongest side still seems far from possible for the new coach.
Despite seeing the need to continue trying different options, the coach doesn’t believe there’s any soft spots in his line-up.
“I think the depth is good and I think I’ve got good players across the field. I can’t see any big weaknesses in this side. I think the backs are pretty much set, but with the mids and the forwards we’ll keep trying things out,” Archer said.
“They just can’t wait to get on. It’s been a long wait.”