During the Bomber's training session this afternoon, the coach took the opportunity to hit back at those who have “slurred” the club and defend his team's chances this season.
“I don’t think we’ll go from sixth to fourteenth just because Misiti, Mecuri and Wellman retired.” Sheedy said.
“We’ll have better players since they have retired because we’ll have a younger side that will be trained up with another six or seven games under their belt. We think we have the right mix, we blooded them last year and we we’ll be able to come in with a better side than we did last year.”
And if the way the team trained today is any indication, it could be a very exciting season at Windy Hill. Forget the results of the pre-season, the real stuff has started.
The team worked on final preparations and it was obvious that many players were willing to put their hand up, vying for senior selection.
Angus Monfries looks set to make his AFL debut, having continually impressed throughout the pre-season and trained well again this afternoon. Tristan Cartledge and Paul Thomas are also chances of playing their first senior games.
“Cartledge is a mile ahead of where he was 12 months ago, because we have had a couple of tall blokes injured like Hille.” Sheedy said.
Dean Solomon trained well, put though his paces with the club giving him every opportunity to play after recovering well from minor knee surgery earlier in the month.
With Matthew Lloyd certain to miss, Sheedy is putting his faith in Aaron Henneman to fill the void in the Bombers forward line.
“He will play, don’t even think about it, he will play at full forward. That’s his job, that’s why we are picking him.” Sheedy said.
Mark Johnson trained solidly, fully recovered from his shoulder reconstruction and will be a certain starter on Saturday night.
Ty Zantuck will have to wait another week to make his debut in the red and black, still having to serve one match of an existing suspension. Also missing from the Round 1 line up will be David Hille, Jason Laycock and Dean Rioli.
Watch Kevin Sheedy’s full press conference from training today on Bomber.tv.
