I wasn’t able to make either of our past two games, but like many in the Victorian football community I was intrigued to see how South would manage a Thursday night NPL game followed by a Saturday night OPL game. The answer? Not too well. We lost to Hume and snatched a last-minute draw against Auckland.

At face value it’s not the best. Hume by all accounts were horrible in week one and we faced them with enough of our first team for me to expect a result. They kind of sucker punched us early and we just didn’t have the fire power to get a result. I was happy to see Singh get on the scoresheet, and from what I saw towards the end of the game we continued to push – but Hume were desperate for the win and hung on. I think the lesson here is not just about player rotation but in terms of how we need to play. When we play with these weaker squads in the NPL – we’re going to have to shut up shop, because going behind may not just be insurmountable but may also force us to play first team players.

The players are starting to look fatigued and the bottom like is we need to manage breaks for them in-season. The Auckland game showed this. The good news is that we probably should have won, and it was a great effort from the boys to get a result. Winning the OPL is possible, but not if we burn out our squad.

I’m very keen to see how we rotate players over the next – 5 games in two weeks? Jeeze…