Border Mail |
NORTH Albury coach Jason Akermanis has turned up the heat on the club’s fringe players after yesterday’s loss to Albury.
Akermanis said he would consider making wholesale changes after the 43-point defeat, accusing the Hoppers’ lesser-lights of getting “shown up” against the better teams in the competition.
“I’m going to have to make some tough calls on players, because at the moment they’re getting in the side and just not doing the job,” he said.
“They’re trying to, but they’re getting shown up.
“We made that many errors that we will not be doing by the end of this year.
“We cannot have this go on every time we come up against a good team.”
Akermanis, who was again in North Albury’s best, said the Hoppers’ were relying too heavily on their star quality when it counted.
“Last week was great, a lot of blokes played well,” he said.
“But this week there was about four guys who stood up.
“And it’s the same four guys, just about.
“You just can’t have that as a group.
“It happened against Yarra, too.”
But the 2001 Brownlow medallist is confident of rectifying the problem.
“The talent of these blokes hasn’t changed since last week,” Akermanis said.
“By the end of the year, when everything is gelling and working I know what happened in this game won’t happen.”
Akermanis also defended the Hoppers’ decision to play Jason Gram.
Gram, who has been battling hamstring tightness, spent the entire second half at full-forward.
He was clearly hampered by the injury as the match wore on.
“Grammy’s obviously been injured but he hung in there,” Akermanis said.
“No doubt it was the right call (to play).
“But things happen in games and it doesn’t always work out.”
