QLD HEADS TO TASMANIA FOR U18 CHAMPIONSHIP GAME 3
The Gold Coast Football Club will head deep south this weekend as it again transforms into the Queensland U18 Representative side to take on Tasmania in Launceston.
Coach Guy McKenna has continued his policy of rotating his squad to see the best Queensland talent on offer and this weekend sees the much awaited debut of Lewis Moss and Rex Liddy. Both Moss and Liddy have been training with GCFC all year and are now set to get some match experience at Aurora Oval at 11am on Saturday. This week’s Queensland team:

B: Milani, Nelis, Storey
HB: Green, Oehlman, Spring
C: Rees, Steven, Daye
HF: Moss, Stanlake, Liddy
F: Jamieson, Hutchinson, Pirika
Foll: Moore, Manzone, Price
I/C: Bevan, Thomson, Ramage, McIvor

GCFC and Queensland Coach Guy McKenna provides the following Q & A on last week’s match and the upcoming trip to Tasmania:

Q: Last week, another close win, how were the nerves toward the end of these games?GM: Yeah I’m certainly getting used to them. I think our last four wins for Gold Coast have been 2 points, 3 points, 5 points and we blew out to 7 points on the weekend so it’s just good experience for the boys. You can’t buy that experience in tight games. Mind you some of them shouldn’t have been tight games. We’ve let our guard down and you get a good experience for the boys to understand that you have got to keep your foot on the throat of your opposition and can’t let it off because good sides will come back and all the sides we have played have done that.
Having said that we actually got behind in certain stages and had to kick again. I think pleasing too, is like all home games should be an advantage and I think the players are playing like they want to defend their turf. The Gold Coast Stadium is going to be their turf in a few years and they are certainly showing they are willing to fight to make sure they come off winners on their home ground.

Q: You’re currently sitting in fourth now, so do you feel that you can match it with any team in the comp?GM: It’s hard to judge because each side and obviously our side through our rotation policy and trying to see as much Queensland talent as we can, our turn over’s reasonably high. We are playing a thirty-ninth boy from Queensland this weekend. Some of the other sides are no different as they run through forty to fifty players as well. We’ll be competitive with the best sides with their full squads in. At the moment a lot of the sides don’t have their full squads in because of the championships and private school footy. It’s one of those competitions depending on who you play and when you play them the results can be vastly different.

Q: With the dual role as the Gold Coast and Queensland coach with the Gold Coast players being the Queensland players, do you change your strategies or tactics?The strategies change because the rules and the way you coach championship games is different to TAC CUP. Having said that you still want to see players one on one compete in time and space and show their skills and things like that and I suppose the benefit you do have controlling the Gold Coast boys and then when they go into the national titles is the fact that you know the history. You know how much work they have done, do they need to play in a different position? Do they need to be rested and played for a less amount of time? So that’s the real positive and the benefit that we’ve actually got control of. Really its one group but the two sides because again we are in the unique situation where we are the best Queensland talent at 18s level playing for Gold Coast and it’s just an actual thing where we pull on the Gold Coast jumper one week and the Queensland one the next.

Q: Do you look forward to a new challenge down in Tasmania next week with the boys, do you reckon they will be able to cope with the slightly colder temperatures?GM: Yes its certainly going to be frosty and I will be making sure that I too open up some boxes and find some warm gear but again, that’s another challenge that they are going to have to face. Having said that they go to Melbourne where although we are indoors at Telstra Dome, 50% of the time you’re going to have good conditions and obviously interstate sides rarely travel down to Skilled Stadium in Geelong but it will be a good experience and its good travel experience as well as we fly to Melbourne and then on to Tassie. As i have said, it’s all about the preparation for the boys and to make sure that they make the physical preparations and the mental side should take care of itself.