Hillside coach Steve Burns never lost faith that his side would turn around its poor start to the Essendon District Football League season.
While he hasn’t been at the Sharks very long, the first-year coach has proved to have an excellent read on the division 1 club.
After a horror start to the season, Burns saw the turning point come against top-of-the-ladder Craigieburn in round four.
Even though they lost by 91 points that day, Burns said there were plenty of positives for his team.
Since then, slowly but surely, Hillside showed all the necessary signs of improvement and started the climb from the bottom of the ladder.
“We were really competitive with Craigieburn except for, maybe, one 15-minute period,” Burns said.
“I thought, they [Craigieburn] didn’t beat us by any more than they beat the rest of the competition, so we started to get some confidence from that.
“That was probably the turning point. We have slowly been getting better and better.”
The fightback was fast-tracked last month, with the Sharks winning their first game of the season, defeating Glenroy by two points.
Hillside followed that with a draw and another win to move up to sixth and ease the relegation pressure.
Burns said the next test for his young group would be to play at the same high level for four quarters.
“There are no fitness issues, there are no issues with them learning the game plan,” Burns said.
“It is just that they’re a young group. With any young group it is very hard to get consistency and that’s going to be our issue.”
After a bye last week, Hillside will be back to where it all started this round, taking on Craigieburn.
Burns expects Craigieburn to have improved considerably since their initial meeting but sees no reason why his side can’t continue its red-hot form.
“We played Oak Park earlier in the year and got beaten by 100 points then drew with them the second time around,” he said.
“We played East Keilor earlier in the year and got beaten by 21. We turned that around to win by 50-odd points.
“If we can do that again and drag the margin back a little and be more consistent over four quarters then I’ll be happy with that.”
