TWO weeks out from the Meadows Greyhounds Division 1 finals, in what looks set to be another close premiership race, reigning premier Macleod finds itself in a rich vein of form.
The Roos have won five of their past six matches, with a number of big names to return to the side this week as the club prepares to defend its flag this September.
“Hopefully we’re starting to peak at the right time,” senior coach Garry Ramsay told NFL.org.au.
“We get a couple back this week, Kane Shaw and Nick Lynch, so that’ll be good. There’s still a few to come back and hopefully the dry grounds suit us.”
Young gun Jack Langford isn’t too far away from a return according to Ramsay, and despite the livewire forward’s Essendon VFL commitments, he has bought into the Roos’ team-first ethos.
“He comes to the team meetings and to all the social functions. He’s well aware of the way we want to play (and) he’s totally invested in Macleod,” Ramsay said.
The reigning premier has become the hunted this year after being the hunter in 2015. Ramsay has been proactive this season in ensuring the Roos remain progressive in 2016’s closely contested premiership race.
“We made some alterations to our game plan at the start and we ran with it for the first half of the year,” he said.
“Not everything worked, so we’ve tinkered with things and sort of got half way between last year and the start of this year so we’re pretty confident of what works and what doesn’t.”
Ramsay knows the Roos are in esteemed company in the Division 1 premiership stakes, with two of the competition’s historic powerhouses among their closest rivals for this year’s flag.
But the Roos coach hopes to build sustained success on last year’s premiership triumph over Greensborough, as they look to become the first club to win consecutive Division 1 flags since Heidelberg from 2007-09.
“Us being that smaller club – we’re surrounded by Heidelberg who’ve won 19 flags, Greensborough 18, and Bundoora five in a short period of time,” Ramsay said.
“We’d like to think we’re not going to be one-hit wonders, we’d like to think we can be sustainable like the other ones have been.”
Sitting a game clear in third position heading into this week’s final-round clash against bottom-placed Lower Plenty, Ramsay believes the lessons Macleod has learnt from its six losses this season have been invaluable.
Perhaps no lesson has been more invaluable than the Round 9 one-point loss to then-undefeated Heidelberg, where the Tigers clawed their way back from three goals behind in time-on to win with the last kick of the day.
“With what we’ve learnt from our losses, we’ve learnt a lot. There were some things that were creeping in consistently with those losses, and in the last two weeks we’ve stopped making those mistakes,” Ramsay said.
“I’d like to think the losses have turned into a positive – I’m hoping we don’t go back there and do the same thing.”
Games record holder Kane Shaw has missed the past two months through injury, however a number of leaders have stood up in the absence of the inspirational captain.
“What’s been able to happen, without Kane there, others have stepped up. It took a while for them to get used to it but they’ve been exposed to it for nearly nine weeks now,” Ramsay said.
“With Kane’s absence we’ve actually been able to develop some more leaders. While it hasn’t been bad, we’ve made the most of the situation.
“There’s a lot other players that have taken up the slack – you can’t replace Kane with one leader so we’ve replaced him with a whole lot of leaders that have stepped up well.”
As Ramsay readies himself for another finals series, the 2015 premiership coach, along with the playing group, are hungrier than ever for Division 1’s Holy Grail this September.
“We sat down maybe six weeks ago and identified that maybe we weren’t performing with the behaviours that we did last year – we may have been a bit hungrier at certain times. It was really good to listen to everyone.
“Probably over the last two weeks we’ve decided that we don’t want to be one-hit wonders and it’s the same deal with the coach.
"I don’t want that to be my only highlight or my best highlight – we all said we hope our best highlights are still ahead of us.
“We put (the 2015 premiership) in the memory bank and keep achieving things.”
Photo by Nathan McNeill
