{"id":163276,"date":"2025-06-13T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/surfcoasttimes\/?p=163276"},"modified":"2025-06-12T09:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T23:14:09","slug":"tigers-prepare-for-top-four-showdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/surfcoasttimes\/sport\/tigers-prepare-for-top-four-showdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Tigers prepare for top-four showdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>COLAC is looking forward to its big test against second-placed St Mary&#8217;s at Central Reserve at 2.10pm in GFL Round 8 tomorrow (Saturday, June 14).<\/p>\n<p>The fourth-ranked Tigers beat Geelong West Giants 14.14 (98) to 4.6 (30) last weekend, with co-coach Jason Armistead praising the consistent performance.<\/p>\n<p>He explained how the Tigers managed the Giants&#8217; attacking style.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re just really attacking from stoppages and contests.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They sort of slip forward and try to surge the footy through contests.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So we just had to make sure that either our mids got their hands on it first or that we had some good cover at the back of the stoppages.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That was the primary thing that we worked on and it seemed to work okay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s expecting plenty of attack from the Saints who have the biggest percentage in the league (303.95) and most points-for with 1076.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_30038\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-30038\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-30038\" src=\"https:\/\/static.timesnewsgroup.com.au\/prod\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/06\/0G2A8132_76810.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-30038\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Colac took lessons from its loss to reigning premier Leopold earlier this season.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re a pretty high-scoring side and very attacking,&#8221; Armistead said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So probably some similar things to the way Geelong West went about it but perhaps St Mary&#8217;s are just a bit [of a] higher-talent side, so it&#8217;s just a matter of trying to slow that down a little bit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Armistead said the Tigers, who have a 5-2 record, were happy with their start to the season.<\/p>\n<p>He said several young players had come into the team and performed well, which had been inspiring for others.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think they&#8217;ve been a pretty steady side over the last four or five years and just injecting a few of the younger guys has probably created a bit of excitement underneath the senior group,&#8221; Armistead, who joined as co-coach this season, said.<\/p>\n<p>Billy Buchanan debuted last weekend after Fraser Holt did in Round 6.<\/p>\n<p>Darcy Lang is unavailable this weekend but Armistead was hopeful of getting captain Jack Melican (hamstring) and Lachie Simpkin (ribs) back.<\/p>\n<p>Micah Robb is still a few weeks away (tibia fracture) while Jack Skinner is serving a suspension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>COLAC is looking forward to its big test against second-placed St Mary&#8217;s at Central Reserve at 2.10pm in GFL Round 8 tomorrow (Saturday, June 14). The fourth-ranked Tigers beat Geelong West Giants 14.14 (98) to 4.6 (30) last weekend, with co-coach Jason Armistead praising the consistent performance. He explained how the Tigers managed the Giants&#8217; [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/surfcoasttimes\/sport\/tigers-prepare-for-top-four-showdown\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":163289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-163276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tigers prepare for top-four showdown - Surf Coast Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Colac Tigers GFL side gears up for a top-four clash with St Mary\u2019s after a dominant win and strong form from exciting young players.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/surfcoasttimes\/sport\/tigers-prepare-for-top-four-showdown\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tigers prepare for top-four showdown - 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