Deer Park coach James Condos has missed most of the season with injury. 64074_04
By MICHAEL ESPOSITO
DEER Park’s goal at the start of the season was to make finals.
Halfway through the year, that hasn’t changed.
It won’t be easy. The Lions sit in sixth on the table with four wins and five losses.
After destroying St Albans by 90 points in the opening round of the Western Region Football League competition, it seemed as if Deer Park’s first year in Division One would be a fairy-tale.
But the Lions were found out by Spotswood the next round, bounced back with two solid wins, but lost their next four games before triumphing against the lowly Sunshine Heights on Saturday.
This weekend’s game against St Albans is a crunch match for both sides. You can bet the Saints won’t let Deer Park run all over them again, but with former Carlton champion Anthony Koutoufides lining up in the Blue and Gold in a one-off appearance, the Lions could be hard to stop.
Koutoufides will no doubt provide a strong target up forward, something the Lions have been missing with star goalkicker and coach James Condos sidelined with a torn abductor.
Condos is just one of several wounded Lions in what has been a horror year of injuries for the club.
Last year’s Division Two league best and fairest Robert Trajkovski is out injured, along with club best and fairest Christian Day, vice-captain Dean Stankovic, Josh Jones and Gareth Daly to name a few.
“We’re tracking OK, we’d like to have had a couple more wins on the board but we’ve been struck with a lot of injuries at the moment,” Condos said. Probably about seven blokes out of our starting 18 are out so it’s a bit of a shame but that’s footy. You can’t do much about it.”
Condos said it’s been frustrating to spend most of the year on the sidelines, but that frustration resulted in him returning to the park prematurely against Albion in Round 4, when he aggravated his injury.
“It probably wasn’t the wise thing to do. But at the time we were struck with injuries, and you want to get out there every week, but it probably made things a lot worse,” Condos said.
The positive news is that the bulk of these injured players will return over the next month, and the side is still in touch with the top five.
Deer Park has still been competitive against top five sides, losing to Port Melbourne by three points, Hoppers Crossing by 12 points and Sunshine by 17 points.
The only two sides to have really shown Deer Park up are Spotswood and Altona, and Altona coach Anthony Eames still thinks Deer Park will play finals this year.
In the second half of the year, we plan to win the games that we got close to winning in the first half. Our goal is definitely to pinch that fifth spot,” Condos said.
“We’re definitely around the mark but it’s just been a bit tough with the personnel. But the structures are there.
“We’re struggling to play four solid quarters of footy at the moment. We’re good for two and a half quarters, but we’re playing about four under 18 kids weekly which is a bonus for the development of the young kids at the footy club.
“Consistency is something were going to work on over next three or four weeks. If you drop off the pace against the better sides you just get found out.”
