THERE’S a sense of deja vu when it comes to today’s Premier League Hockey grand finals, but Sam Macpherson of St Pat’s and Bathurst City’s Jess Hotham hope their games against the Lithgow Panthers don’t unfold the same way as last year.
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Pat’s will play in Bathurst and City away in Lithgow today against the same opponents that defeated them in the deciders last year 5-2 and 4-2 respectively.
The aim today will be to create happier grand final memories.
Both Macpherson and Hotham are strikers who have missed match time this year due to injury, but have now found form at the right time of the season.
Macpherson also missed match time after being overseas, but has been a valuable addition to the strike unit of the Saints when available.
Even though his team won’t carry a single loss, or even draw, into today’s grand final, Macpherson said that streak will be forgotten if it isn’t capped off with one more victory today.
“For this game we need to forget what’s happened so far all season. It’s a great record to have, but it means absolutely nothing at this stage of the season,” he said.
“We learned our lesson last year by thinking that things would just happen for us. We’ve got to go out there, fire up and make things happen.”
Pat’s defeated Panthers 6-2 in the major semi-final, but anything can happen on grand final day.
Macpherson is confident the Saints can hold Panthers at bay once more, citing improved depth as the big turning point this season.
“We’re a tight-knit group of friends and we’ve got a lot of depth in this team. Even when we’ve had four or five players out we’ve got enough there to back us up,” he said.
“We’ve had the whole club behind us. It’s been well-managed and well-coached. Ben [Hurford, coach] has fit into this side like he’s always been there.”
City’s path to the women’s decider was a more stressful one as they had to survive a penalty shoot-out in last week’s preliminary final against Orange Ex-Services.
They were forced to take that longer path into the grand final after surrendering a 2-0 lead to go down 3-2 in the major semi-final against Panthers.
Hotham said that result could easily have gone in her team’s favour had they not lost focus close to the Panthers’ goal, and the same mistakes can’t be afforded again.
“We know Lithgow are a very quick team with a lot of overheads being thrown, so we’re mostly working off how we played in that last game with them. What the Servies game did show us is that we have to lift that one more everywhere across the park,” she said.
“We’re definitely up there with Lithgow. Lisa [Quinn, coach] went back through the last game we played and there were chances that we should have put away. We can’t afford to miss those again.”
Hotham said City are capable of matching a Panthers team leading the way in many areas of the competition.
“Their fullback is very good, their passing is great and they always pick up their players. Our marking has to be good this game,” she said.
“During the year, at times we haven’t been at our best. Players have been injured, including myself, and we have had players off in representative teams. We have had none of those problems going into the semi-finals and you can see the difference.”
The men’s final will be played at 2pm at Bob Roach Field and the women’s decider at 1.40pm at Lithgow.