Hawks' ability to find 'way to win' excites Ogilvy
23 Mar 2022
1
min read


Illawarra Hawks skipper AJ Ogilvy discusses how important last round's wins were for his side, while also previewing Sunday's showdown with Melbourne United in this week's Illawarra Mercury 'Captain's Call.'
It sounds really simple, but this time of the season is all about finding ways to win.
Early on in the season, there's any number of reasons why you might have lost a game or even a few in row.
You might have guys out with injury, you might have a bunch of short turnarounds, you might have been on the road for a long stretch.
They're all things you can point to when you still have the benefit of time. At this point of the season though, they're all meaningless excuses.
You simply have to find a way to win. I feel we did that against Tasmania last week.
It was no secret we'd struggled against them this season. They're not a great match-up for us but we were able to lock in and find a way to beat them by forcing the game into a tempo that suited us.
We gave them some easy looks on the perimeter early on and they knocked a few down, but we were able to roll with that and shift things back our way.
We haven't been able to do that on the run previously so that was the challenge we set ourselves. We rose to it, but we can't afford to miss the jump against Melbourne United this weekend.
If you let them get away from you it's a monumental task to reel them back in. You can't let a guy like Chris Goulding get his tail up.
We need to focus on their bigs as well given the way they've been playing but I feel that's where we match-up pretty well, they play a little bit bigger like we do.
I thought when we played them earlier this year we executed our scout really well and really limited the guys we'd focused on.
Then Matthew Dellavedova had a career-night from long-range. That's just the way it goes sometimes. Delly's shown through his whole career he's a guy who just finds way.
It's what all teams are looking to do and you can't let any outside factors or noise influence that. I think all teams get a bit of a lift when the regular season finish line is in sight because they're all so tough.
We've made good use of a full week's preparation because it's not a luxury we have beyond this week. It's going to be hectic from here with all teams in the finals hunt playing for their lives.
If we're going to be a finals team, as we know we should be, we need to execute down the back end of the season and win games when they count.

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