Willis suspended for the first time in 24-year first grade career

Willis will miss Saturday's Group Nine clash against Young and the Diesels' following game against Southcity after receiving a two-game suspension for striking.

Willis was sent to the sin bin for 10 minutes early in Junee's opening round 38-20 loss to Temora at Laurie Daley Oval last Sunday.

The strike landed at a two-game suspension after discounts were applied for an early guilty plea and his clean record.

Willis has owned his actions and is disappointed to have let the club down.

"It was just stupid to be honest. Extremely regrettable," Willis said.

"Not regrettable that I got caught doing the wrong thing, I've played first grade for 24 years and this is the first time I've been suspended.

"I've turned 40 and I've lost my cool, it's probably old age. I'm very disappointed in myself, I've let the club down, I've let the boys down. That's probably the most disappointing thing as well, being out.

"I had to put my hand up and I said to the committee it's inexcusable, it's clearly evident and you cannot fight the stupidity so I put my hand up and copped it."

Junee captain-coach Daniel Foley will return from his overseas honeymoon in time to face Young on Saturday.

Willis, who was in charge for the loss to Temora, is out, along with injured hooker Joel Munro (elbow).

Willis said the outs will force a reshuffle but he's confident the Diesels are in a good position to cover the omissions.

"There will be quite a fair bit of chopping and changing," he said.

"We've got plenty of depth. The club's been pretty lucky over the last three or four years that they've been able to foster a 16s and 18s team, which has given the club a significant amount of depth.

"Through reserve grade and those guys, there's a couple of kids knocking on the door in the under 18s that could possibly be used in positions in first grade and they got their opportunity in the trials as well at the start of the year and they've been training the house down so they're ready to go. They've been blooded somewhat.

"There were some kids that played a little bit of first grade last season, I guess you could almost say they were thrown in the deep end a little bit with a lack of depth that the club had last year so the depth that the club has is quite strong this year, which is good.

"We'll call upon that depth this weekend for sure."

Willis said there were enough positives out of round one to work with moving into the Young game.

"Everything that could have gone wrong in our first half went wrong. But we definitely lifted ourselves in the second half," Willis said.

"It was patchy, there was some really, really good bits, there was just no consistency in our good bits.

"Our second half was considerably better, we played as a team, we got a couple of repeat sets, we started to grind, which is what we've designed I guess the way that we're trying to play is surrounded around, our game plan. That was the most pleasing thing that we picked up our act and played some really good footy."

Young drew with Southcity 28-all in round one and Willis expects them to come out firing on Saturday.

"Young's always been strong, they've been strong as I can remember, they've always recruited really well, they've got some great players and really good coaching staff over there so I'm expecting that they will be ready to fire," he said.

"I'd say they would have gone into that game against Southcity relatively confident of taking the two points at home so they'll probably fire up against us, especially driving all the way to Junee to play us."