WAFL: best footy needed for West Perth Falcons to defeat Subiaco Lions

They’ve got big bodies all over the ground and maintain high intensity across the four quarters. We’ve got a significant challenge ahead of us to defeat them at Arena Joondalup on Saturday.

The Lions are the complete package at WAFL level.

But no one’s unbeatable and while it will take our best footy, we hope to exploit their small number of faults.

There are elements of our loss to them in last year’s grand final we can look to improve upon, but the match is largely irrelevant.

Subiaco has had a big turnover in personnel since then.

That said, we played them in the pre-season and I watched them against East Perth last week and there are still some aspects of their game similar to 2015.

So we can’t completely discount the grand final, but there’s certainly more important points around how they set up this season, particularly with their new players, on which we need to focus.

We go into the clash without some of our first-choice players who pulled up sore from last week’s 12.12 (84) to 6.7 (43) win against Perth.

Kody Manning suffered a corked shin, Rohan Kerr finished with back soreness, Chris Keunen received minor knee damage and Max Duffy had hamstring tightness.

Manning and Keunen are not expected to play, while Duffy and Kerr are a 50-50 chance.

We’ve got a few guys pushing through the reserves, including Mark Hamilton who was unlucky to miss last week, who we believe can fill the void.

Our effort against the Demons was far better than our loss to South Fremantle.

We set ourselves up to have a more committed effort across the board, both offensively and defensively.

I thought the players answered that challenge against a Perth side that was no walkover.