Roos to go ‘full throttle' on wounded Dogs

Yahoo

13-03-2025

North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson says the Roos can't afford to underestimate the wounded Western Bulldogs in their season opener on Saturday.
The Bulldogs won't have five of their best players, headlined by captain Marcus Bontempelli, who polled four of a possible six Brownlow votes against North last season.
But Clarkson says the Roos, who themselves have star forward Nick Larkey racing to mend a corked calf, will need to be on high alert for the battered Bulldogs.
'I pretty much take note of what's going to be out on the park and what was out on the park a couple of weeks ago in Launceston was enough to beat Hawthorn,' he said.
'The Bont played that game but he was done in 10 or 15 minutes and what we do know is they are a very competitive outfit.
'They've had injuries before but they learn how to cope with them. They've had time to figure out what they can do in terms of replacements and give guys opportunity in those spots.
'To be fair, we can't afford to be taking any team lightly, we'll just go full throttle and hopefully it's enough to be competitive against the Dogs.'
The Roos won three games last year, all in the second half of the season.
They also fumbled two three-quarter-time leads to Collingwood and West Coast as well going down by less than a kick to Melbourne.
Clarkson hopes the Roos can improve on what was a poor first half to last season and will use the three-quarter-time score as an indicator of improvement.
'We're looking to compete deeper into games. I think in the first 11 games of the season last year, I think at three-quarter time we weren't really in the contest in any one of those,' he said.
'The second half of the year we were better at competing for longer. We won three of those games – a couple others we could've won but found a way to lose them.
'If you look at the second of the year and said, 'Well, if they won those couple they probably should won then they'd have five in the second half of the year', and that's starting to show evidence we're on the right track.
'We'd like to consolidate on that by really getting deep into games and still being competitive, not having either our fans or anyone else turn the telly off at three-quarter time.
'It's pretty much a key method of how we can judge how we're going this year.'
Larkey sat out North Melbourne's match simulation on Thursday morning and will undergo a fitness test on either Friday or the morning of the game on Saturday.
Finnbar Maley trained in Larkey's position, while ex-Sydney Swan Jacob Konstanty has also put his hand up to join Finn O'Sullivan as a debutant.
'(Larkey) got a corky at training and we didn't want him to train today just to allow that to settle down a little bit,' Clarkson said.
'We're hoping he's going to be good as gold by the weekend, but we can't absolutely stamp it right now until he comes in tomorrow.
'We didn't want to run him today and aggravate that at all. He'll have a run around tomorrow or maybe even Saturday morning.
'It's not ideal but he's had a great summer and that's why we'll give him every chance to play.'
O'Sullivan is set to join other top draftees Sam Lalor, Harry Armstrong, Luke Trainor (all Richmond), Josh Dolan (Western Bulldogs), Murphy Reid (Fremantle) and Sam Marshall (Brisbane) in making their debuts.
Impressively, Armstrong, Trainor, Dolan, Reid and Marshall all played in the same junior competition growing up — the South Metro Junior Football League.