For Orange City, Saturday’s Blowes Clothing Cup local derby against Orange Emus is all about self-belief.
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That’s the word of halfback Tom Nell, he said it was missing the last time the Lions faced Emus, at Wade Park in May.
“Emus are the benchmark, without a doubt, but we have to believe we can beat them,” Nell said.
“We have to try and outsmart them.”
Just how the Lions do that is something Nell didn’t give too much away on.
“Look, it’s easier said than done. I’m not really sure where Emus’ weakness is at the moment, but having faith in what we do well and executing will go a long way to doing that,” he said.
“We do have a really good backline as well so we’ll try and use that. Emus’ backline has probably been the best in the competition but we didn’t really get to test ours against them last time.
“We lost (fullback) Keegan Harding early on and (outstanding centre) Jake Davis as well, which hurt us in that game and has hurt us since as well.
“But Keegs will be there this weekend and we’ve got some really handy backs playing alongside him too, so we’ll try to test Emus out wide and really take the game to them.”
Nell said an 80-minute performance is a non-negotiable for his side, something the Lions hadn’t produced until last weekend’s confidence-boosting, 63-0 drubbing of Dubbo Rhinos.
“We know what we can do, but have to do it for longer periods. You can’t switch off against any side, let alone the competition leaders,” he explained.
Those backs Nell’s talking about include the likes of Jackson Coote, Sam Dwyer, Harding and, if he’s available, Sam Coote.
It’s not just about the outside men though, the Lions do need to focus on winning the battle up front against the bigger, more experienced Emus pack.
“Emus pack will probably be bigger than ours, we’ve dealt with that all season, so we need to be smart there too,” Nell said.
Orange City’s starting XV was to be finalised on Thursday night, the Lions are still suffering from plenty of injuries.
Kick-off at Endeavour Oval is at 3.15pm.