Greater Western Sydney coach Leon Cameron has challenged his young team not to allow injury woes to be the trigger for a long mid-season losing streak.
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The bye appears to have come at an opportune time for the injury-hit Giants, who are clinging to a place in the eight after losing their past two games by a combined total of 98 points.
They are unlikely to have any of their key big men back in time for matches against Richmond, St Kilda and Gold Coast in a stretch that will go a long way to determining their finals fate. The Giants felt the full impact of injuries to ruckman Shane Mumford and key defenders Phil Davis and Joel Patfull on the weekend.
They were smashed 20-4 for centre clearances as North Melbourne's Todd Goldstein cashed in on Mumford's absence in the ruck with a best-on-ground performance. And the experience of Davis and Patfull was missed in a Giants backline that was under siege due to North's midfield dominance.
The Giants had a team with an average of 58 games' experience compared to North's 140. "The more experienced sides who have been around and done an apprenticeship come harder at you," Cameron said. "You want to find out who has the resilience to come through it. The real good sides cope with it regardless and get their 16, 17 wins each year, the young sides might lose two, three, four, five in a row and get belted because of pure experience.
"I'm confident we can bounce back but every game is a tough game. They're [North Melbourne] one or two off full strength and we're five or six and the games difference is 70. We've got to learn from it and we know we can."
The Giants brains trust will need to find a way over the bye to overcome their ruck deficiencies before playing Richmond, which, like North, have a seasoned ruckman, in Ivan Maric.
Cameron said Mumford's injury presented a good good opportunity for back-up rucks Rory Lobb, Andrew Phillips, and Tom Downie to gain invaluable experience in the second half of the year. Cameron is unsure what impact the break will have on the Giants, but the feeling is they will benefit from a freshen up.
The coach was proud of the performances of first-gamers Caleb Marchbank and Jack Steele.
Also waiting in the wings in the reserves are Adam Kennedy, Curtly Hampton, Will Hoskin-Elliott and Jed Lamb, whom Cameron said would press for opportunities in the coming weeks.
