Friday, January 7, 2011

Olympia to take on South Hobart in midday showdown at Olinda Grove




Photos (Top to Bottom): Luke Cripps (centre) of Clarence United will play for Olympia against South Hobart; Goalkeeper Mark Moncur may get a run with South Hobart; Goalkeeper Michael McKenna is likely to feature for South Hobart [PlessPix]

South Hobart will play Olympia Warriors at noon at Olinda Grove tomorrow in a final preparation for the visit next week of South Melbourne Hellas.

Hellas will play South Hobart, twice, and Olympia during their 4-day visit to Hobart.

“We’ll be seeking to give 16 or 18 players valuable match practice tomorrow because over the two games against Hellas we’ll probably use that many players,” said South Hobart coach, Ken Morton. “That’ll be our main focus.

“We want to see how players cope at this stage of the season. I’m looking at the overall picture of our playing group.

“I’m hoping Chris [Hey] will play two 45-minute halves as I think players have to get to 45 minutes and we can then build on that.

“We’ve got two games against Hellas and want to ultimately put our best team out against them on the Sunday.

“We’ll try and determine which is our best eleven to start the match against Hellas on the Sunday.

“On the Thursday night, obviously, I think it’s a great opportunity for our young lads to go out and perform against their reserve team players and their fringe players, who are all quality.

“We want to expose ourselves at a higher level.”

Former Olympia, Taroona and Metro goalkeeper, Michael McKenna, is tipped to make an appearance for South Hobart.

Olympia will have some new faces on view tomorrow.

Clarence pair Sam Cannamela and Luke Cripps will play, as will a former Clarence player in Nick Heggy, who is studying in the north of the State.

Robert Kay will be in goal as Dmitri Nester is unavailable and Justin Farrugia is in Western Australia.

Olympia are also interested in former Clarence and Glenorchy Knights keeper Alex Tatnell. He may play for one half of tomorrow’s match if his cricket commitments allow it.

“We’ve got a reasonable team,” said Olympia coach, Chris Hey. “We had a very good week this week at training with attendances and some good-quality players turned up from other clubs.

“Some of those will be on display.

“We’re giving a couple of players interested in joining us a game tomorrow.

“We’ll probably have a squad of 19 players.

“It’s our first practice match of the year and a build-up to next week so it’s not a game that will be taken lightly.

“It’s a game in preparation for the beginning of the season.”

South Hobart had an intra-club practice match on Wednesday night which resulted in a 7-6 score-line.

The game was high in quality as fringe players and youngsters sought to impress Morton

Football Federation Tasmania president Sean Collins refereed the game and was reported to have been impressed at the standard.

South had three of their latest Korean imports on view, together with two of the three Koreans already playing with the club.

The latest trio arrived only this week and were highly impressive with their speed, skill and tactical awareness.

One of the trio is 23-year-old midfielder Gyu Jun Kim, who has played in Burma, while another is 20-year-old left-sided midfielder Jae-Ho Lee.

None of the three latest newcomers will play against Olympia but they will watch the match.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

south loyal premiership winning reserve players may need to jump ship now . there are 7 prem teams that would you in their senior team .

Anonymous said...

Ohhhhhhhh Korea

Anonymous said...

south win 7-0. olypmia were minus grillas, hedge, tracy, richarson, nesta and kumpalainen from their last game and hey, meredith and nandan only played half the game. new players were canamela, heggie, garth & cripps who all played in defence.

Anonymous said...

that is a woeful scoreline from olympia. theres no excuses for that. these guys are playing against south melbourne next week