North Wagga’s Dave Karlberg will be doing everything within his power to overcome a calf injury in time for Saturday’s Farrer League grand final.
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Karlberg took on the reserve grade coaching job this season but has been a fixture in first grade in the back half of the year as their second ruckman relieving Charles Shaw.
He missed last week’s preliminary final, going down midway through the semi-final loss to Marrar two Saturdays ago.
“At the moment I’d say I’m 50/50,” Karlberg said. “But I’ll do everything I can to give me every chance to play either the first grade granny, or the second grade granny.
“I’ve got heaps of exercises to do, which I’ve been doing every day. Every second pretty much. Heaps of rehab, every chance I can get to try and get it right.
“I’ll go see a few people and hopefully they can work out what’s wrong, isolate it, and then I’m right to play.”
Karlberg was part of the Saints’ reserve grade win last year and has played three senior grand finals at Ganmain-Grong Grong-Matong.
He is overjoyed to see North Wagga rise from the ashes to reach a senior grand final for the first time since 2004.
“It’s unbelievable – 14 years being down the bottom, always like, shat on and like, ‘North Wagga, you’re nothing, you’re nothing’,” he said.
“Where now, we’re starting to come up. We are a fair dinkum side and we’re a good cultured club.
“Everybody we talk to about coming here says, ‘Geez you’ve got a good club. It’s a good core group, it’s all fun and there’s no drama. Everyone’s just one group. It’s a great club and to get in a grand final in all three grades, especially first grade, I can tell you the club’s going to be flying around this week.
“And if we win, it’s going to be unbelievable.”
Watching your own team play can be the hardest thing in the world sometimes but Karlberg was uplifted afer watching the Saints beat Temora on Saturday.
“It was unbelievable. Just seeing the boys play the way they did. It reflected a couple of weeks ago when we blew them out of the water,” he said.
“It was the same footy and if we bring that next week to Marrar, I reckon we’ll have their measure – if we play the way we did today, it’d be heaps good.”