By Andrew Cooling.
The Friday Forecast: On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!
Welcome readers to the first edition of the NPL Tasmania Friday Forecast (out early this week due to the Friday season opener), a weekly preview column I will be writing for this website each week throughout the 2022 season. It will forecast all the upcoming weekend action as well as touch on any major stories that might break mid-week. I will also be producing a review piece each Monday morning that will cover all the action from the weekend, which you will also be able to find here in the new McDonalds NPL Tas News Hub. I will be doing the same thing for the WSL so make sure to check that out as well.
Having taken a step back from the local game the past couple of seasons after finishing up in my media role with Football Tasmania in 2020, it’s fantastic to be back covering this league on a freelance basis. And what a season we have in store! At this stage of the year, we are still flying a little blind, at least until we have seen all the sides and their new signings in action. But on the surface, it appears we have a wide-open title race. I can make a case for four different sides to win the league which is not something I have usually been able to say about the competition previously. Typically, there are a clear couple of favourites established heading into the season, but this year that doesn’t seem to be the case. That bodes exceedingly well for an exciting year. It all gets underway on Friday night at Empire Couriers Park, let’s jump in and preview the action.
South looking to pick up where they left off at their rivals’ home
South Hobart v Olympia: it’s a classic modern rivalry, one forged in the title races of years past. Whilst their more recent battles haven’t been the title-deciding kind that we became used to in the earlier years of the competition, there is still little love lost between these two and you can usually guarantee a fiercely competitive battle on the pitch whenever they meet. Both sides will be eager to put their best foot forward in the season opener with a prime-time Friday Night clash at Empire Couriers Park to kick things off.
South Hobart has not put a foot wrong throughout the pre-season, they’ve been flawless, playing five, winning five, and adding a nice new trophy to their burgeoning collection with Monday’s Summer Cup triumph. They might’ve lost some big names such as 2021 League MVP Kasper Hallam, Hugh Undy, and Sam Tooze which accounts for 38% of their total goals last year, but with Isky Van Doorne returning and Nick Morton looking in scintillating touch, goal-scoring did not appear to be much of an issue in the pre-season, scoring 15 goals in 5 Summer Cup games. They will be firmly in the mix this season as they look to join the Strikers as 4 times league Champions.
After pushing the Strikers all the way in the 2019 season, the past couple of seasons has seen the Warriors falling back to the middle of the pack, dropping to sixth in 2021 with a smaller points tally than they managed the season prior despite playing an extra 7 games. The days of big spending and flashy recruiting appear well in the past now as they move towards a more academy-based production line of younger talent. Four defeats in their four Summer Cup outings were less than ideal, but they did offer their best performance in their most recent game, a 4-3 defeat to the Lions. This is a tricky start for them, and they will need to be more solid at the back than they were in their 4-1 defeat to South during the Summer Cup group stages if they are to spring a surprise here.
Stirring Lions Face Stern Early Test In Rematch of Dramatic Final Day
For years the Kingborough Lions have been labelled the sleeping giants of Tasmanian Football, but it appears now that they have well and truly stirred from that slumber. Under Jez Kenth they have steadily improved year on year, rising from sixth in 2019 to fourth in 2020, then fourth again in 2021 but with a record points tally and a breakthrough trophy in the form of their Summer Cup victory. Now after a series of impressive pre-season performances, they appear primed to take that next step and thrust themselves firmly into the thick of the title race. The addition of Noah Mies, the Hess brothers and Tom Prince has reinforced the squad and added that extra little bit of quality they probably lacked to really take it up the top sides last year. This is comfortably the most talented collection of players the Lions have assembled since the inception of the NPL and we saw through the pre-season they are well and truly good enough to mix it with the best. A game against the side that have been the standard-bearers in the NPL TAS for the past six years should give us a good early glimpse of just where they are at.
The Strikers should come out hungry for this one, as they return to the venue where they saw the title slip through their fingers on last season’s dramatic final day. It was the Lion’s 2-1 victory over the Strikers in that game that denied the Strikers what would have been a remarkable fourth title in a row and fifth in six years, instead allowing Knights to swoop in and snatch it away.
So how will they respond in 2022? Well knowing Devonport, don’t be shocked if it’s with a vengeance. It will be a somewhat different-looking side in 2021, though plenty of the old guard responsible for this period of success remains at the club. Coach Chris Gallo departs along with Eddie Bidwell, Miles Barnard and stalwart in net Nathan Pitchford. Pitchford leaves a particularly big hole to fill in that they have had the luxury of being able to lock in the best goalkeeping the state year after year and just not have to worry about the position. He brought a remarkable level of consistency in addition to his locker room presence as a leader. His departure leaves enormous gloves to fill but signing a gloveman in Keegan Smith with Wellington Phoenix on his resume seems like a pretty good way to go about it. Not playing in the Summer Cup, we haven’t seen Devonport this year, but them being in the title race has been the safest bet in Tasmanian Football for so long now that it would be mad to expect anything less. This should be a cracking first up match and could well prove an important 3 points come a later point in the season.
Defensive Question Mark Hovering Over Defending Champions
The hunters now become the hunted as the Glenorchy Knights head into the 2022 season as the reigning champions and the team everyone is now chasing. Expectations were high for James Sherman upon taking the Knights job, with a clear edict that trophies had to be won and he has delivered them just that in the form of the 2020 Lakoseljac Cup and then the 2021 NPL Tas title. His big task this year is figuring out how to go about replacing goalkeeper Lachie Hart as well as defenders Lucas Hill and Tyler Harrison at the back. The outstanding trio played every single one of their NPL game last year and they were a massive part of the reason why they shipped just 16 goals across the entire 21 game season. Defence generally wins titles, so keeping things tight at the back will be paramount if they are to defend their crown. Early returns in the Summer Cup were concerning in this regard as they shipped three goals in each of their losses to South, Lions and Clarence Zebras. The talent is still there further up the pitch, but unless they get things sorted at the back, they will be up against it.
They will nonetheless be expected to kick things off with three points first up against a Riverside team whose 2021 season was by their admission well below where they were aiming to be. The Roo’s solitary win came on the final day of the season, which saw them resigned to the foot of the table, a place no club wants to be and where they will be looking to avoid this year. Making that difficult will be the departures of some of their shining lights from a tough campaign, with Fletcher Fulton, Mackenzie Hancox, Tom Prince and Aaron Campbell all departing over the offseason. Leaving Alex Gaetani to scramble to find replacements. Young players such as Will Prince appear primed to be given bigger opportunities to show what they can do whilst a trio of international signings in Kosiku Mizuno, Isael Carvalho and Jean-Phillipe Rutabayiro loom as pivotal players if they are to avoid a repeat finish. It will be tough first up on the road against an opponent they have never taken points from before, but whilst they might have preferred an easier fixture to kick things off, early in the year might be the ideal time to play Knights as the new-look defence is still gelling.
Can the Italian Club’s close the gap?
Rounding out the Weekend’s action will be the lone game in the North of the state for the weekend as Launceston City play host to Clarence Zebras in the Italian Derby. The ledger is all square between these two in the five matches that they have played with Launceston City claiming 2 wins, Clarence Zebras 2 wins and one game being drawn, demonstrating there has been very little between the pair over the past 2 seasons. City were the competition’s big improvers last season, jumping up from the bottom of the table in 2020 to finish four points ahead of Zebras en-route to a fifth-place finish. This year the objective will be to attempt to close that gap to the top four. It sat at 14 points last year and given the expected improvement from the Lions this year that will be no easy task. If they are to do so, it will require them to maximise their home games, so this one looms as a particularly vital game to start to the season, at home against a team they will believe they can beat. They appear to have recruited well, bringing back a number of former players such as Charlie Dyer, Mackenzie Hancox and Aaron Campbell, but will a lack of pre-season games hurt them? The Summer Cup hit-outs might well provide an edge to Clarence Zebras in the extra match sharpness it will have given them.
The Zebras showed some good signs in the Summer Cup, playing some nice attacking football and winning two of their four games including a surprise 3-2 victory over Knights that might just have elevated expectations of what this squad could possibly achieve in 2022. Sam Tooze looks like being an important signing, joining from South Hobart and giving them some extra firepower in attack. This was an area that they badly needed to reinforce the squad, with Riley Dillon scoring 14 of their 33 goals last season and nobody else managing to score more than 4. After sixth and seventh-placed finishes in their first two seasons since the merger between Clarence United and Hobart Zebras they will similarly be looking to close the gap to the top four and they will be hoping they might just be able to catch their more fancied opponents on the hop and get 3 points in pursuit of that.
McDonalds NPL TAS ROUND 1
Friday 18 March
Olympia Warriors vs South Hobart, 8:00pm, Empire Couriers Park,
Saturday 19 March
Kingborough Lions vs Devonport Strikers, 2:30m, Clennett’s Lightwood Park
Glenorchy Knights vs Riverside Olympic, 4:30pm, KGV Football Park
Launceston City vs Clarence Zebras, 4:30pm, Buckby Motors Park,