Alex Sexton (pictured) and Brody Haberfield have been included in the Australia Post Queensland Scorpions side for Game 4 of the NAB Australian U18 Championships tomorrow
Friday, 1 July, 2011
Surfers Paradise centreman Brody Haberfield has been chosen from outside the Australia Post Queensland U18 Scorpions squad to replace an unavailable Richard Newell in the side for tomorrow’s crunch clash with NSW/ACT.
Haberfield, younger brother of former Scorpions ace and Gold Coast Suns trialist Jesse Haberfield, was named in the centre for Queensland’s fourth match in the NAB Australian U18 Championships at Visy Park in Melbourne.
Coach David Ashkar will be hoping that Haberfield can be as effective as Sandgate midfielder Tom Overington was in last week’s outstanding win over the Northern Territory.
Overington had been chosen under similar circumstances and after a string of similarly good performances at club level in the Pineapple Hotel Cup, and rewarded the selectors when he topped the Queensland possession tally with 31.
Haberfield, a standout four weeks in a row for Surfers Paradise and best afield last week, got his chance after Newell was declared unavailable by the Brisbane Lions.
Newell, a former Lions’ NSW Scholarship holder and arguably the Scorpions’ most consistent player in the three championship matches , was told he was required this weekend for the injury-ravaged Lions Reserves.
In the only other definite change, AIS/AFL Academy member Alex Sexton (pictured) was cleared to return to the Queensland side after missing last week’s clash with NT due to an ankle injury.
Exactly who else misses out will be determined after fullback Michael Wyld faces a late fitness test and when the 25-man travel party, in Melbourne for the last two matches against NSW/ACT and Tasmania, is cut to tomorrow’s match 22.
The other new face in the championship squad is key defender Luke Reynolds, who played in the first three warm-up matches before going down with osteitis pubis. He had been in excellent recent form with Sandgate since being given the all-clear to resume.
In a competition in which none of the division two sides have stolen a win from any of the division one sides, Queensland will be well-placed to challenge for the division two title if they can beat a NSW/ACT that lost Tasmania by 15 points last week.
So, if the Scorpions can beat the Blues and Tasmania beat NT, as is expected, then it will pitch-fork Queensland and Tasmania into a division two title-decider at Skilled Stadium, Geelong, on Thursday.
The Queensland side to play NSW/ACT tomorrow is:-
B: Chris Murphy, Michael Wyld, Scott Wagner
HB: Jackson Allen, Tom Fields, Peter Yagmoor
C: Dalton Tucker (capt), Brody Haberfield, Andrew Boston
HF: Alex Sexton, Jackson Starcevich, Tom Davidson
F: Adam Oxley, Fraser Thurlow, Jackson Rolfe
R: Sam Michael, Tom Overington, Lachlan Russ
INT (from) Aaron Laskey, Clay Cameron, Henry Joyce, Brian Coleman-Broome, Josh Smith, Josh Kolka, Luke Reynolds.
