Coolamon assistant coach Marshal Macauley concedes it’s a long shot but the Hoppers will head to Leeton Showground on Saturday to try and turn the finals race on it’s head.
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The Hoppers have not given up on finals and will set out to win their last two games of the season to keep their hopes alive.
Coolamon face fifth-placed Leeton-Whitton on Saturday, and then fourth-placed Ganmain-Grong Grong-Matong at Kindra Park in the final round.
They need to win both, and hope Turvey Park can upset the Crows in the final round to grab fifth spot.
“It’s a long shot but there’s still something to play for,” Macauley said.
“There’s always something to play for but this gives us a bit more.
“I don’t think we can win each game by 150 points (for percentage) so I think we’re going to have to rely on Turvey to do the job, and us do the job as well.”
Leeton-Whitton defeated Coolamon by 29 points earlier in the year. The Crows kicked seven goals in the first quarter and the Hoppers were never able to reel them in from there.
Macauley said Coolamon will take confidence from that game.
“Absolutely, we’ll highlight the things we did change and how it did work for us,” he said.
“If we can do that for four quarters then it will make a big difference to us winning and losing.”
Macauley has enjoyed his first season as assistant coach despite Coolamon only winning six games.
“It’s been good, I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve learnt a lot from Connor and it’s been a good experience,” he said.
“We’ve had the chance to blood some young blokes, which is always a positive.
“From the outside looking in, we might have been a bit disappointing but from the inside, we’ve had a lot of injuries.
“We had 14 blokes 19 and under that played last week. We had an average playing age of 21. That’s not a bad problem to have and there’s some ripping kids there too.”
Coolamon will go to Leeton with confidence on the back of a ‘patchy’ 11-point win over Wagga Tigers.
Before that, they went down to top two teams Griffith and Collingullie-Glenfield Park, but showed enough, according to Macauley.
“I know we didn’t win against Griffith and Gullie but we played some of our best footy in those two games,” he said.
“Last week (against Tigers) we were patchy. We started really well but we’ve been playing in patches all year. We can’t seem to put teams away. One thing that I’ve felt we’ve done all year is that we’ve kept teams in it and games have been too close.”
Macauley said stopping the influence of Matt Rainbird will be crucial to the Hoppers’ hopes.
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