Round 1 Preview v Claremont

SOUTH Fremantle heads to Claremont Oval to take on the two-time reigning premiers this Saturday with the youthful Bulldogs looking to claim a big scalp to begin the 2013 season.

A new-look and incredibly young South Fremantle team finished off 2012 strongly winning four of its last five games and now the Bulldogs have undertaken a big pre-season campaign under new strength and conditioning coach Mike Vegar.

That leads coach Paul Hasleby to be in no doubt that he has a fitter and stronger at his disposal as he enters his second year in charge of the Bulldogs.

South Fremantle also comes in off a strong pre-season win last Saturday over Swan Districts at Fremantle Oval by 41 points on the back of a terrific second half performance where the Bulldogs booted 11 goals to just four from Swans.

However, the task ahead this Saturday is a massive won in the form of the WAFL premiers of the last two years, Claremont.

Even though the Tigers have lost some important dual premiership players including Kane Mitchell, Tom Lee and Lewis Stevenson, they still have enormous depth and have got strong additions in the form of West Coast premiership ruckman Mark Seaby and former Essendon, and Swan Districts running defender John Williams.

South Fremantle will unveil some new faces as well headlined by former Port Adelaide midfielder Mitch Banner, who showed in the pre-season matches that he is a prolific ball winner and goalkicker.

Mitch Carter will also play after returning to South Fremantle from Carlton as will versatile big man Alistair Gillespie after 12 league games with Claremont and being best on ground in last year's reserves premiership.

South Fremantle's colts have been dominant the last two years winning premierships and Jason Maskos, Jacob Martinez, Kingsley Smith, Anthony van Malen, Sean Lynch, Tim Kelly and Tom Vandeleur are all in contention to take on Claremont on Saturday.

While Hasleby doesn’t expect to have his full squad available to pick from until perhaps a month into the season and he is under no illusions as to how big of a test Claremont is, that under no circumstances means he doesn’t head to Claremont Oval confident of coming away with a win.

"What people expect of Claremont is irrelevant really. We all start on even par and they have to get wins just like we have to get wins. We are ready for that challenge this week and hopefully we can come away with the points," Hasleby said.

"We are feeling pretty confident, but we aren’t going to be at our best until probably Round 4 or 5 when we get our full squad back up, and some game time into everyone.

"Claremont has a few missing from last year, but they are always going to be competitive and they are a proud club. Hopefully they don’t take us too lightly because we will be on our game on Saturday."

South Fremantle is missing Craig White, Adam Guglielmana, John Sgherza, Shaun Bewick, Nick Borovac, Adam Carter, Brendan Gulley, Lewis Harvey, Jayden Woods and West Coast's Ashton Hams from this week's side, but Hasleby still has plenty of selection dilemmas to weigh up.

"It's a great situation for a coach to be in when you have selection coming up for Round 1 and it will be pretty hard because a lot of guys have put their hands up. We just have to find the right balance and pick the team that is going to take on Claremont," Hasleby said.

"We haven’t seen Andreoli, Collica, John Sgherza who was really effective for us last year, we haven’t seen much of Adam Carter and Shaun Bewick is out for a bit longer. There's a bit of depth there and when they all come back it will be good."

By Chris Pike