Bombers midfielder David Zaharakis has dismissed claims that his side has implemented a brand-new game plan following the club’s disappointing round one loss to Greater Western Sydney.
The 29-year-old said the playing group wouldn’t stand for that performance, but the team sees Saturday’s clash against St Kilda as an exciting chance to respond in front of the home crowd.
“We don’t stand for that performance. This group has shown that we can do it, so we hope that it was an isolated event and not a pattern behavior and we’re confident that it’s not going to be that,” Zaharakis said on SEN on Wednesday.
“But there’s been no overarching change to the game plan, I don’t really know where that has come from.
“Like every team, every season you go through your overall game plan that you might slightly tweak or add a few things to over the pre-season just to react to the trends of the game.
“Our identity as a side is our pressure around the ball and our contest, and we just didn’t execute that on the weekend. People might think we’ve changed our game plan, that’s not the case, we just didn’t execute our actual game plan as players.
“That’s probably the disappointing thing because we know it, we answer the questions correctly in meetings spot on, but it’s about performing it on the weekends and we just didn’t do that, which was really disappointing.”
David Zaharakis directs his teammates at the Bombers' main training session on Wednesday.
The Bombers face St Kilda at Marvel Stadium in their first home game of the 2019 season on Saturday afternoon.
The on-baller said the team has now moved on from the loss and will narrow its focus on playing with instinct against the Saints.
“This group has shown what they can produce so we’re confident that the weekend’s performance was an aberration,” he said.
“Our training this week has been really good, but we just didn’t transfer that to the game. We had a great session (today) where the intensity was up, the pressure was on, so hopefully our fans will see that out of our game on the weekend.
“Perhaps we weren’t playing on instinct (last weekend), so we’re really going to focus on that come Saturday.”
You can be part of the action on Saturday when the Bombers take on the Saints at Marvel Stadium in their first home game of 2019.
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