EIGHT CHANGES FOR THE THUNDER

by Alex Paull

PEEL Thunder has made eight changes for the clash with Swan Districts at Steel Blue Oval tomorrow, welcoming Fremantle ruckman Jonathan Griffin and draftee Thomas Vandeleur into the fold.

Griffin and Vandeleur will make their Thunder debuts alongside Fremantle rookie midfielder Jacob Ballard, while young star Dylan Winton is also an inclusion.

There were initial fears for Colin Sylvia after he suffered a quad injury in the Round 1 loss to East Perth, but the two-week break has been critical to his recovery and he retains his spot.

Josh Mathers, a backman hailing from Warnbro will make his debut for the club, and Peel Football Manager Brad Bootsma paid tribute to the 20-year-old’s persistence and hard work.

“It’s a wonderful story with Josh, he’s been on the senior list for three years and really stuck it out playing reserves football and each year he’s got better and better with his progress and development,” Bootsma said.

“He’s come on this week and plays his debut game, so I’m really looking forward to seeing Josh play; he’s a credit to himself that he’s got a league game this weekend.”

While he admitted the early bye was not ideal, Bootsma said the playing group had trained throughout the break as if it was preparing for a match, and he was confident they would be well-prepared.

“We utilised the bye to make sure the same training rate would get done as if we played a game, so we crammed a lot of our work into the three days and then gave the boys the weekend to freshen up,” Bootsma said.

The Swans pushed East Perth last week, going down by 18 points, and Bootsma said the key to securing a victory was sustaining pressure over four quarters, and complementing that with polished disposal.

“The key for us is keeping them under constant pressure and I suppose another key area is our ball use, which needs to be better going forward,” Bootsma said.

“We feel that we move the ball well from the backline through the midfield but fall away into our forward line, but we’ve got Taberner and Apeness up there who can take strong marks, so we just need to show some polish in our forward entries.”

Given the spirited display against the premiership favourites in Round 1, Bootsma said the players were fresh and raring to take on the Swans.

“We’re really confident that we can put up a good showing this weekend, last game we were hamstrung by only having one interchange, but we know the Swans have quality so we will have to be on our guard,” he said.

Bounce down is 2.15pm tomorrow afternoon, and if you can’t make it to Steel Blue Oval you can watch the Thunder on ABCTV.