GROUP NINE
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TIMING is everything to Gundagai coach James Smart, who yesterday admitted a rigorous preseason crippled the Tigers in their pursuit of an elusive Group Nine title last season.
The last club to fall in line, Tigers will begin training tonight with the intent to time their peak to perfection for the Group Nine finals this year.
Heading into his third year as coach, Smart yesterday declared his views on a preseason regime have changed after the Tigers suffered a heavy injury toll at the tail end of last year.
"Some teams have been training for quite a while so it'll be interesting to see once the comp comes around whether there is a huge gap between those who have started early or not," he told The Daily Advertiser yesterday.
"I think we're the last club back, but we needed it.
"We had a fair few injuries at the end of last season and some of the blokes are still trying to manage them.
"There's clubs that have been training for a while and probably have trained a lot harder than us, but we're going to try and train smarter."
Finishing second on the Group Nine ladder last season, the Tigers held Albury to its first loss of the season in round 18 only to thump Young 22-6 in the qualifying final the following week at Anzac Park.
The Tigers were then dumped out of the finals with two straight losses to grand finalists Thunder (42-4) and Southcity (28-22).
Learning from the experience, Smart is adamant the Tigers will take a different approach to their preseason this year and will not be chasing any additional trial games.
"The biggest challenge and something that I learnt from last year is to manage the players better through the season, fatigue wise," he said.
"Last year we had a really tough finish to the season but I felt we peaked a little bit too early in the last round and then we couldn't get back to that level, we kept taking backwards steps until we were knocked out.
"That's the main reason we won't go chasing any trial games.
"I think the competition is getting stronger, even since 2011 and last year was stronger again, and this year looks like its taken another massive step up.
"The biggest thing is that there's no easy games, that's when trying to manage the players and injuries and all that stuff becomes a lot harder.
"Previously you might get a couple of tough games and then one where you might be able to rest a player or two, but if we want to do that this year we'll be taking a real risk. Any team looks like it'll be in with a shot."
The Tigers lost representative stars Matt Ward (Brothers) and Brett Eccleston in the off-season, and will blood new recruits Damian Willis (Junee) and Phil Latu (Junee) tonight.