Football: Hawks wary of wounded Dons

Augusta-Margaret River will be wary of a Donnybrook outfit on the rebound this Saturday, according to coach Tim Noakes.

Both clubs enter the game at Gloucester Park in patchy form — the Hawks have lost two of their past three games while Donnybrook will be out to snap a four-match winless run.

The Hawks are expected to welcome back reigning Hayward medallist Jeremy Humm, as well as ruckman Nick Derickx, Cody Miller and Jonathan Eastwell, but they have lost Josh Morgan for a week through suspension.

All players missed AMR’s threepoint loss to Busselton last Saturday night.

Noakes said his players set themselves a goal at the start of the year of not losing at home and would not underestimate the Dons.

“I’ve watched them once this season, they are capable of playing good footy but just haven’t been able to string it together the past couple of weeks,” he said.

“I played with a few of their travellers at Perth in the WAFL so I know them well.”

Despite losing to Harvey-Brunswick-Leschenault and Busselton in the past three weeks, Noakes said his team had taken plenty out of the narrow defeats.

“We still played some good footy, we probably had eight of our best 15 out last week against Busselton,” he said.

“The boys that came in tried really hard and put as much pressure on their ball carriers as I asked them to.

“We created turnovers and kicked some goals early but we missed some opportunities and lost unfortunately.”

Noakes also said he had put his hand up to represent the South West at the Landmark carnival and expected all Hawks players in the squad to follow suit, if they were fit to do so.