Hanwood take on Lake Albert in Football Wagga's Pascoe Cup

Coach Jason Bertacco feels that if there had of been games last weekend, they wouldn't have been able to get sides up across all grades due to a mixture of flu, COVID-19 and injuries.

Heading into this weekend, there are still a number of players who will miss the clash with Lake Albert, but Bertacco is taking a positive outlook into the weekend.

"We are unsure what the team is going to look like at the moment, so we will just have to see how we get through Thursday night and then put our squads together," he said.

"Across all three squads, we will probably be down 15-16 blokes.

"There will be a fair few young boys backing up, but as we have said in the past, we have a big squad for a reason and train together for a reason, so whoever comes in, we know they will do a job."

The Hanwood side has a number of players on the sideline for a prolonged period of time, including midfielder Dem Torino who is expected to miss the next four to six weeks as a minimum.

Bertacco was taking the positive approach of knowing the Torino would have plenty of time to get his body right before finals.

This weekend will be no walk in the park for the Hanwood side as they prepare to take on a Lake Albert side, who are currently sitting in third place.

The Sharks have only dropped two games so far this season and are coming into the game off the back of a 4-2 win over Leeton before the bye last weekend.

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Bertacco knows his side will need to be on their game.

"They were really hard the last time we played them over there, and they are probably the form team at the moment if you look at results," he said.

"They have been scoring a lot of goals and playing pretty positively by the look of it. Lake Albert is always strong no matter what position they are in, and if you look across the board at their club, they are top two or three in every grade."

Hanwood has been solid at the back, having only conceded one goal across the opening 10 games of the season and coming up against a side that possesses a tall line-up, the Hanwood coach knows his defence will be tested.

"The boys in the defensive line put a lot of pride in making sure they can keep a clean sheet," he said.

"We are expecting a lot of aerial battles in the box because last time we played them, they had two or three real clean headers that could have gone either way."

The first grade game against the Sharks will kick off at around 3.20pm.

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