‘We want to go for gold’: Live stream Lindisfarne and New Norfolk SFL clash
The 2022 SFL season kicked off with fireworks as Lindisfarne staged a blinder against New Norfolk. See our full match report and watch it back here >>
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A ONE-MAN wrecking ball has turned the New Norfolk-Lindisfarne arm-wrestle into a Two Blue romp.
Boyer has been a graveyard for so many sides in the SFL but on Saturday it was Lindisfarne doing the bullying on way to 67-point win over the Eagles, 18.15 (123) to 9.2 (56).
But it was far from the tale early.
The Eagles soared early, leading by three points at the first change.
It took until halfway through the second term for the visitors to take the lead for the first time, only for Caleb Triffitt to restore the advantage for New Norfolk with a beautiful long set shot from the boundary.
Enter Sam Adams.
The nuggety forward broke the game open with a goal burst before half time, including three individual majors to himself to give Lindisfarne a 24-point advantage at the main break.
From there it was all one way traffic.
He finished with five and earned the praise of his coach, Michael Cassidy.
“He’s a bull, he’s good for us as we can throw him in the guts when we need a big body around the contest or we can throw him one out in the square and he can kick a couple quickly so we are pretty lucky in that regard,” Cassidy said.
Lindisfarne dominated the third term, keeping New Norfolk scoreless during the quarter while pushing the lead out to 53 points.
The Two Blues cruised to the win in the last quarter, with a couple of late Eagles goals only adding a tiny bit of respectability to the margin.
It was Lindisfarne’s first round one win in three seasons.
“We knew they would be young and thought they would stick with us for a little bit,” Cassidey said.
“But we backed our fitness in and thought if we stayed with them we could run over the top of the them and it turned out to be true and it worked out pretty well.”
PREVIEW: New Norfolk v Lindisfarne
A FIT and firing Lindisfarne say a heavy focus on its fitness over the summer has them cherry ripe to make amends for a disappointing past two seasons.
The Mercury will live stream the reserves and seniors clashes from Boyer Oval exclusively tomorrow afternoon from 12pm. Make sure to bookmark this page to catch all the action.
After winning back to back flags in 2018 and 2019 Lindisfarne has been knocked out by Huonville in successive preliminary finals and the Two Blues say they’re done making up the numbers.
“We want to go for gold so that’s what we are coming for, we want that Premiership in season 2022,” Lindisfarne captain Jack Gleeson said.
“We touched on it over pre-season we are not happy contending for a prelim and that we’d love to be at North Hobart on the last day challenging for a trophy and fingers crossed we can win it this year.”
The gun onballer said his side had addressed areas of concern over the summer and decided it needed to get fitter to reach its lofty goals.
“We sat down in November and had a chat to try and nut out why we didn’t get to the final day and we think our fitness dropped off in the last month or so with Huonville touching us up in those last couple of games and us bombing out.
INSIDE SFL: Key ins, outs and player movements for 2022 >>
“So fitness has been a big thing and getting everyone to commit and making sure everyone buys into the first day of pre-season until the last day and I think the boys responded well.
“The way we move the footy we like to get teams on the outside and use our foot skills so we thought if we could get our fitness a bit better then it would hold us in good stead and there’s probably no better way than seeing that than playing at Boyer on Saturday.”
The Two Blues big summer on the track will be put to the test on Saturday when it faces an inexperienced New Norfolk side blooding six debutants to senior footy.
Eagles coach Tim Butterworth said it was an exciting time for the club and with no expectations on them this season he was looking forward to developing his young list.
“We don’t mind the underdog title and we are happy to have it,” Butterworth said.
“Obviously our aims if for finals but it’s more of a building year for us because we have a lot of youth coming through so we’ve taken this year as a building step.”
Butterworth said his young side would play an attacking brand of football and that it would soon find out where it sat in the pecking order coming up against who he saw as the competition’s yard stick.
“We rate them as probably the best,” Butterworth said.
“Their list is the best by far I think in the comp so we rate them as number one so it’ll be a good challenge to see where we sit.”
Reserves go head to head at 12pm while seniors battle it out at 2pm at the Boyer Oval.
The Mercury will exclusively live stream a double-header game of the round each week for the entire season including the finals.
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