THE Devils face a very tall task to beat Geelong in Saturday's VFL game at North Hobart.
And I mean that literally because the Cats, who should be fit and fresh after having the first-round bye, boast 16 players on their list who are 190cm or more.
They include Mark Blake at 199cm, Paul Chambers and Matthew McCarthy at 197, Matthew Egan at 196 and a chip off the old block in young Nathan Ablett at 194.
Gary Ablett's boy has been in outstanding form in their VFL practice matches, went to Perth at the weekend with the seniors as an emergency and from all accounts is a pretty exciting prospect.
Mathew Jovanovic will probably take McCarthy, but Ablett? I don't know yet.
With that sort of height on a small ground like North Hobart, it will really test what we are made of after last Saturday's very disappointing away loss to Springvale.
So I'm going to have to look at maybe bringing in some talls like Markham Johnson at 205cm and Tim Peterson at 194cm.
Our lack of good practice matches to harden us up didn't help and that's something we've discussed with Tasmania Football Club president Guy Abel for next year.
Guy is keen to help and he believes the new 300 Club tickets package for AFL and VFL games here will help generate the money for us to play practice matches against other VFL teams.
It would certainly help make us physically and mentally better prepared for the start of the season.
Playing practice matches against club sides here which we won very easily clearly didn't give us that.
We were underdone against Springvale in what were pretty hot and windy conditions and the intensity and pace of the game on a hard ground found us out.
Losing Justin Plapp early with a grade-two ``hammy'' in the first quarter also threw our forward line out of whack.
Plapp will be out for three weeks and with Leigh Walker, Ben Atkin, Matty Drury, Kane Richter and Ben Reynolds also on the injured list, we're certainly well below full strength.
I think the game was a bit of a reality check for our players.
We had a good season last year and I think too many players thought it was just going to continue.
We had 85 tackles, which is pretty high, but our accountability was way off and so was our running game.
The other day I mentioned I'd ring Ben Careless to see if I can talk him out retirement.
I'll do that this week because we need his size and experience and, and going from what his wife said, she'd be glad to get him out of the house!
By: MATHEW ARMSTRONG, DAVID STOCKDALE
Last Modified on 05/04/2005 10:15