CAMPERDOWN coach Phil Carse is wary of a Warrnambool outfit brimming with top-end talent.
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The classy midfielder-forward can reel off the Blues’ stars but is confident the Magpies can negate and counter their impact at Leura Oval on Saturday.
“They have really dangerous forwards in Sam Cowling and Luke Cody and top-line midfielders in Dan Weymouth, Tom Ludeman, Jackson Bell and Darcy Graham,” he said.
“Individually I feel they are as a good as any team in the league with their top-end talent. It’s an exciting challenge. All year on paper we’ve come up against midfields with big names but we have backed our systems in and worked hard to get the win.”
Third-ranked Camperdown is coming off its second loss of the Hampden league season.
Warrnambool has won three of its past four matches to be a second-half-of-the-season finals darkhorse.
Carse believes it is the ideal pre-bye match-up.
“A couple of our guys were off their games last week and we’ve backed them in to find a response,” he said.
“We know we had a bit of a flat spot last week. We have trained hard and are keen to show it was an aberration.”
Warrnambool coach Matt O’Brien says the Blues are playing as a cohesive unit and had heeded lessons from their 16-point round to defeat to Camperdown.
“They use the ball really well and I remember from the first round how well they ran from the back line, spread wide and then came back into the middle,” he said.
“They used the ball sensibly but when they were on the burst and in space, they took off.”
Warrnambool teenager Harry Ryan is one of the Blues’ new faces. The utility, who made his Warrnambool and District league senior debut for Merrivale at 15, has played centre half-forward, centre half-back and ruck.
He joined the Blues’ juniors in 2017 before getting a best 21 call-up in round three this year.
“It’s not as big a difference as I thought it would be coming from playing seniors in the District league,” Ryan said.
“It’s the same sized bodies but the skills are different.”