Northern Jets are set to be boosted by the inclusion of Adam Flagg for Saturday's game against Charles Sturt University.
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Flagg has been cleared to the Jets and is named to line-up for the club in the round four fixture at Peter Hastie Oval.
Flagg, a Northern Jets junior, has spent the best part of the last decade in the Ovens and Murray League with Lavington, where he booted around 150 goals.
The 28-year-old has been helping out on the bench for the Jets during the early rounds and has been training with the club on and off for more than a month.
Flagg has committed to the club for the season and coach Josh Avis could not be happier to have him on board.
"He's been coming to training, he's really been apart of it and getting around the fellas. We've been talking to him a while, he's done a staggered month of training for us, he's run the board for us so we're happy to have him playing," Avis said.
"The type of bloke he is and the level of footy he's been involved in, he wanted a good month to get his body right to make sure he wasn't underdone. He's super professional with that team approach, he was like 'I don't want to come in because I'm a name, I want to come in when I'm fit and ready to go and can give 100 per cent.'
"He's been really good to deal with from my end. There's a buzz every time he's at training, he definitely has a presence."
Flagg, a premiership player at Lavington, is expected to play forward and strengthen a Jets forward line that already boasts Matt Wallis and Jack Harper.
"At the moment with the discussions I've had with him, he likes playing that forward role," Avis said.
"I think for us, we sort of relied so heavily on Wal (Matt Wallis) the past couple of seasons, it might be nice to have another option and create a bit more of a headache for opposition clubs.
"We seem to be developing a forward line that when they're on, they're pretty potent and with (Flagg) coming in I think we're going to have to make some changes just for the immediate future just to get him comfortable, give him some time. There's nothing worse than getting a bloke in and playing him completely out of position and him not feel comfortable.
"We'll play him up forward, we'll work with him and see how he fits in to the broader side but at the moment we're looking at him as another option that will give Wal a bit of a break.
"We're pretty impressed when Wal pushes up the ground so it might even give us the flexibility to push Wal to centre-half-forward and push up the ground and get that presence further up the ground not just on the goalkicking front.
"Another experienced head is what we need to steady the ship at the minute. Adding another experienced bloke might help balance it a little bit so those moments when we're not quite on, we steady a little bit rather than having three, four, five goals kicked on us."
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Flagg is currently juggling his time between home at the farm at Ardlethan and in Albury.
He and Avis are both inclusions into a Jets team that enjoyed a 57-point win over Coleambally at Ardlethan last week, giving the club two wins from the opening three rounds.
Avis said the focus was firmly on getting a win over their 'hoodoo' team on Saturday, explaining that the club has not won at Peter Hastie Oval since 2017.
"We can't afford to drop these sort of games, we need to get the monkey off our back," Avis said.
"We're not going to progress, we're not going to be the team progressing to finals if we can't beat our hoodoo team.
"The way the league is this year, we cannot be off. If anyone's off, you can quickly get seven or eight goals kicked on you. That's the way it's going to be this year."
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