‘Future of Tassie footy’: Devils women eye off win in build towards VFLW

Tasmania’s women’s coach Jodie Clifford says the squad is keen to be “the future of Tasmanian football” in the VFLW, as they eye off a win this Saturday.

Tasmania coach Jodie Clifford shares a laugh with players during a win over Norwood earlier this year. Picture Solstice Digital

Tasmania women’s coach Jodie Clifford says her squad wants to be part of “the future of Tasmanian football”, and is confident they’re on the right track to being a competitive VFLW force.

With the team initially projected to enter the league next year, Saturday’s clash against Sydney/Canberra at North Hobart Oval is the squad’s final representative outing for the year.

Clifford believes the setting up of talent academies to ensure the squad trains together more has them on the right track to be ready for the next level.

Tasmania was super competitive against a strong Queensland at Latrobe a fortnight ago, trailing by just three points at half-time before the visitors’ run overpowered them in a 42-point win.

“We’re obviously playing for the future of Tassie football, the girls know that and they want to be a part of that,” Clifford said.

“We’ve been open that the squad we’ve picked is a really young squad but a talented one. We know it has room to improve, and in two or three years time if this team can stay together will be really competitive in that VFLW space.

“We try to balance that (looking to the future) and it’s hard for selection. We play a team (each game) and we want to be competitive, but we also want to make sure we give those young players the chance to get experience, because that is going to set them up for that future.”

Tasmania is yet to beat NSW/Canberra, and Clifford said the squad identified a need to improve fitness after their loss to VFL heavyweights North Melbourne in March.

“We’ve done a lot of work on fitness, a ten week running block,” Clifford said.

“After our game against North Melbourne I put it back to the girls what we needed to improve, and a big thing that came out of that was fitness.

Jodie Clifford coaches the Tasmania Devils form the bench in the win over Norwood. Picture Solstice Digital

“We’ve put together a strong fitness block and I think the girls are fitter than they’ve ever been.

“Playing on a smaller North Hobart ground will suit us. It’s not too big and open where it will open us up too much, but we can execute the running patterns we want to.

“Even though we lost to Queensland we improved on the previous two years (results).

“An important thing to note is our journey is about our ability to progress. If we start to regress then we’ve got some issues and we really need to look at things, but while we close the gap between the powerhouse states I think we’re on the right track.”

Clifford said they were unable to sustain the running power they showed in the first half against Queensland.

“We really took it up to Queensland in the first half. We were really happy with that, we want to replicate that and play four quarter football,” she said.

“(In the second half) we didn’t create the run we wanted and we’ve trained that really hard.”

Saturday’s women’s clash begins at 12pm, followed by the men at 2.15pm.