Must Repay Fans: Saville
Illawarra Mercury
Thursday October 9, 2008
THE Wollongong Hawks have adopted a "we owe you one" attitude in the countdown to tomorrow night's home meeting with Perth.
Barely 2000 people fronted for last Saturday's big loss to the South Dragons and Wollongong forward Glen Saville said his side can't afford another poor performance against the Wildcats."It's tough to keep people coming back, and if you're not competing and they can see you're not competing and having a go, they're not going to come next week," Saville said."They're not going to spend that extra money to bring the whole family to have a look at it if you're not having a crack yourself. We definitely owe a little bit to the fans and we owe it to ourselves."The Cats will take a psychological edge into the clash after accounting for the Hawks by 13 last week in Perth.Ninth-placed Wollongong are 1-3 and need a victory to remain in touch with the leading pack.Despite boasting a deeper, more talented roster than last season, they are struggling for confidence and conceding a league-worst 108 points per game."We had a chat after the (Dragons) game among ourselves and were pretty honest with each other, and we realised we're probably just not having a good enough crack at it," Saville said."Everyone's aware of what we need to do a little better, and it ultimately gets down to effort plays. "One way or another, we're breaking down at the defensive end, whether it's a couple of seconds into the shot clock or towards the end of the clock. It's just breakdowns that require a lot of effort to get it right and we've just got to dig deeper to get it done."No-one's panicking. The signs are there that we can do things well, but it's just a matter of doing it consistently. Because when you play against good teams, that's what separates you, the fact they do it for 48 minutes."Training has been better this week and hopefully that carries over to the game."
© 2008 Illawarra Mercury