The Lions today released an unplaced squad of 34 players its first round of pre-season matches, headlined by the return on inspirational skipper Jonathan Brown.
General Manager of Football Operations Dean Warren said it was important for the Club to effectively manage the workload of its players over the next month in the lead-up to the season proper.
“We’ll be playing a mixture of experienced and younger players,” Warren told SEN on Thursday.
“We obviously want to go out there and be reasonably competitive, but at the same time you have to look after your older players.”
“(The NAB Cup) also presents a great opportunity for us to get a really good look at our first and second year players, and see how far they’ve come in their development.”
“So you can expect to see a few of them get a chance to play during the pre-season.”
The Lions’ first round draft pick from last year Billy Longer is one new face set to experience his first senior AFL hitout on Saturday night.
“Billy will play at least one of the games on Saturday night,” Warren said.
“We’re really looking forward to seeing him play. We have high expectations for him, as we do all our other first year players.”
One first year player notably absent from the Lions’ squad was 23 year-old Dayne Zorko, who recently suffered a minor injury setback.
“Dayne unfortunately had a little hip problem, but we’re hoping to see him back on the field by end of NAB Cup.”
“He’s been one of the best players in the State League competition for a number of years, and we are delighted to give him an opportunity.”
Warren also expressed his delight in the recent signing of midfielder Jack Redden, and said the Club was in a great position to retain its strong group of young players for the future.
“We’ve worked very hard over past 12 months to ensure that the Club environment and culture is strong enough to hold us in good stead to retain players coming out-of-contract.”
“We certainly believe that we’re heading in the right direction and want to keep this group together. I think we still have the second youngest list in the AFL, so there’s still a lot of development still to go.”
CLICK HERE to see who was selected in the Lions' 34-man NAB Cup squad for this Saturday night's round robin of matches against Melbourne and the Gold Coast SUNS.
