NEW Norwood coach Brad Snell has identified four quarter consistency as the key for Norwood to bounce back into the South Australian National Football League (SANFL) Women’s finals series. The Redlegs missed the post-season series for the first time in women’s club history, which Snell puts down to lapses in performance from quarter to quarter.

“The makeup of the list is pretty similar, I think our list we had last year was more than enough, it was just a matter of stringing together enough consistent footy and playing consistently how we wanted to play,” Snell said. “I’m hoping we won’t see it in the list as such, but in the way we play, and more consistent for longer within games.”

Snell takes over the head coaching reigns from Mat Creeper, coaching the club to its first two competitive hitouts in the recent trial games. Going down to North Adelaide in game one before taking out a big win over Glenelg in game two, Snell said that the club learnt a lot from the matches, and took a particular focus on data analysis.

“We went to work that next week (after the North loss) and again we didn’t get it perfect against Glenelg, but it was better and we learnt a lot, we’ve gone onto work again since then,” Snell said. “We’re big on data within the group, we’ve recruited a couple of people who one was working in Champion Data, myself who was pretty big into data and brought Brad Ferrall on who’s opposition analysis.

“Once we’ve got data on opposition on how they play and how we play against them, I think we’ll only improve from here with playing those trials.”

Looking at the list, Norwood is never short on young guns, headlined by top-ager Molly Brooksby as well as over-ager Lana Schwerdt. Snell said both of them, along with a number of other youngsters were key to the success of the club this season.

“Molly’s just an elite kick, she’s just a talent. She’s an elite kick I think that’s probably her weapon,” Snell said. “She’s amazing watching her on the track, she just does things that really excite us. Lana’s a great kid and probably just missed out and we’ve got other young ones coming through. Grace Whittaker, Elle Lineage, Jazzy Egan, all three of them played both trials. Rosie Boon, Tamsyn Nation, these are all girls who are under 18 who will be in the mix for a Round 1 League berth.

“Then we’ve got girls under 21 like Alana Lishmund and Sarah Branford, we’re pretty lucky in regards to the squad makeup. On the other end you’ve got Ali Ferrall and Ash Gould, who have got five, six years experience in them and really mentor those younger girls, we’re pretty lucky with what we’ve got.”

Norwood takes on reigning premiers North Adelaide first, a side that comfortably beat the Redlegs in the opening trial, but despite that, Snell said it was a “perfect” first round opponent.

“You’d rather play last year’s premiers Round 1 and know where you’re at,” Snell said. “We’re just big as a coaching group ‘how do we know?’. We think they’re fitter, how do we know? We think they’re playing better, how do we know? If we think we’re going alright and we’re playing North we’ll find out a lot.

“We’re excited to play them, it’s going to be under brand new lights at Norwood. To be able to play at a venue like that, we’ve got a past players night, it’s going to be a real event and we’re really excited about it and hopefully we can play good footy. If we get a win, fantastic, if we don’t, hopefully we play well and people like coming to watch us.”

As for the season expectations, Snell said he would not set “lofty” goals, but was certainly hoping the club could push for a finals berth. It all started with playing “consistently for longer”.

“We’d just play a quarter or two very well last year, and then we wouldn’t stay in the game, so at this stage ours is playing four quarters of footy,” Snell said. “We’d like to play finals but so would everyone else. I don’t think there’s any coach that aren’t setting themselves for finals, so we’d like to play finals and go as deep as we can.”