Southern league: Cranbourne plans to fight back from ‘mini slump’

Eagles coach Steve O’Brien outlines his side’s plans to resurrect its premiership hopes in Southern league Division 1.

Cranbourne’s Marc Holt is given a yellow card by the umpire on Saturday. Picture: Valeriu Campan

Cranbourne made a thunderous entrance to Southern Football Netball League this season, winning 10 of its opening 11 games.

The Eagles earned rave reviews from rivals, who labelled the newcomers the team to beat for the flag.

But the tide has turned in recent weeks.

Cranbourne has lost three of its past four games and coach Steve O’Brien concedes his side is in a mini slump — not ideal with finals just around the corner.

The Eagles lost to Cheltenham by 70 points on Saturday, with O’Brien labelling his side’s effort as “pretty pathetic to be blunt”.

Cranbourne coaches on Saturday. Picture: Valeriu Campan

Cranbourne champion Marc Holt was given a yellow card as his frustration boiled over.

He sat on the bench for the pretty much all of the last quarter.

“He’s very frustrated,’’ O’Brien said of Holt.

“He has high expectations...we basically sat him out in the last quarter. We said, ‘let’s cool our jets and use this time to reset for the following weeks’.’’

Mick Boland suffered a knee injury.

Their backs against the wall, the Eagles face a great challenge.

Cranbourne coach Steve O’Brien.

O’Brien says his men can turn things around, if they’re prepared to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

“We’ve got to realise it’s just not going to happen for us, we’ve got to put in the hard yards and work together as a group, find the belief and get up and about again,” he said.

“We’ve got three weeks before finals to do it.”

Curtis Barker takes a kick for Cranbourne.

Cranbourne faces Mordialloc (away), Port Melbourne Colts (home) and Bentleigh (away) in the remaining home and away rounds.

The Eagles beat all three sides convincingly earlier in the season.

“Hopefully we might be able to get a few boys back but we can’t be relying on that, we’ve got to deal with what we’ve got in front of us,” O’Brien said.

“It’s a great challenge, of our depth, of our character, what this game means to us as a group.

“Do we really want to achieve the things we say we want to achieve? That’s our challenge.”

Cranbourne captain Brandon Osborne was the Eagles best player on Saturday, with Lachlan Grant, Matt Alister and Ryan Jones also impressing.