West Coast and Geelong will welcome back key players from injury-riddled 2012 seasons and show off new recruits in the AFL pre-season cup triple-header with Fremantle at Patersons Stadium on Saturday.
The trio of teams will do battle in Perth with West Coast facing Geelong to start off proceedings followed by the Cats playing the Dockers and then finishing off with the first western derby of 2013.
Even though Dean Cox, Nic Naitanui, Daniel Kerr, Mark Nicoski, Beau Waters and Matt Rosa will be among those not playing for the Eagles, coach John Worsfold is excited at the return of of All-Australian forward Mark LeCras.
Former Collingwood premiership player Sharrod Wellingham will also play his first game for West Coast.
“We will have two relatively even sides and not one extremely young side or one with a few more mature sides. Basically they will be two evenly balanced teams,” Worsfold said.
“It is extremely important to get time into the younger players, but the players will want to go out and win. That’s what they do.
“We’re not picking our absolute best team to say it’s win at all costs, it’s about performing your best and trying to win with a bigger picture in mind.”
Fremantle won’t have captain Matthew Pavlich, former best and fairest David Mundy, reigning club champion Ryan Crowley or young gun Nat Fyfe, but coach Ross Lyon is comfortable with his squad and with the fact that all those players will be right to play in a fortnight’s time.
“It’s a great competition to be able to expose some young players and people who had really strong pre-seasons,” Lyon said.
“You go in with the ultimate aim over the next three or four weeks to condition our players for round one of the season proper, and identify where we are going well and need to improve.”
Despite Geelong being without the likes of Hamish McIntosh, Josh Hunt and Paul Chapman, Cats coach Chris Scott will unveil former Melbourne veteran Jared Rivers and Gold Coast midfielder Josh Caddy for the first time in the blue-and-white hoops.
Exciting forward Travis Varcoe is also fully over the foot troubles that robbed him of all but one game in 2012 so Scott is excited to get things underway to where his team is at as preparations kick up a gear for the season proper.
“We are looking to play well, first and foremost. It’s really important that you play your very best football against the best teams in the hardest venues,” Scott said.
“There are positives and negatives for playing either end of NAB one, but we think that our program is going to be pretty good leading into round one.”
