RUSSELLS Creek coach Jay Everall is adamant the Kangaroos are making progress despite a wayward start to a campaign full of hope.
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The Kangaroos, wooden spoon winners in 2014, entered the Warrnambool and District league season confident of improvement after a productive summer.
But they are winless after three rounds and went goalless against Allansford last weekend, a match played in relentless rain. High-flying Nirranda awaits today.
Former American college footballer Matt Foster will make his Kangaroos debut while Brad Everall and Zach Westwick are among other inclusions.
“Individually and as a team there’s been improvement, there’s no problem there at all,” Everall said.
“The challenge we face most weeks is we have a number of changes, it’s been a bit frustrating. We don’t have a lot of depth.
“We made six changes this week, it’s a bit hard to keep the group cohesive. But we deal with that.”
The second-year coach was pleased the Kangaroos were “starting to see some younger fellas play a role” while others with more experience had stepped up.
“You look at our three best players, Daniel Lumsden, Marcus Askew and Nathan Williams,” he said. “They hadn’t been highly featured in our best the first couple of weeks but all played steady games, that had been building.
“Then you’ve got guys like Dylan Jongebloed, who has come out of the under 17s last year and who has improved week after week and kicked a couple of goals.
“Our midfield has been playing fairly consistently. We came up against a pretty ruthless midfield on Saturday but those boys are working together better and better.”
Everall said he had not dwelled on the loss to Allansford — “I don’t think there’s a lot of point in that” — but was pleased with their endeavour throughout.
He was confident a breakthrough win was not far away. South Rovers, Merrivale and East Warrnambool await before the interleague break.
“I’m still fairly buoyant we can trouble some teams and get some wins on the board as the year progresses.”