Eagles boss Blake warns against complacency
Dec 10 2010 by Mark Douglas, The Journal
PAUL Blake has warned against complacency as the Newcastle Eagles take on winless and pointless Essex Pirates.
The Pirates are in town for the second time this season – their first encounter with the BBL champions having ended in an embarrassing 112-43 win for Newcastle, one of ten straight defeats for the Essex outfit.
That is the kind of form that makes Tim Lewis’ men major outsiders at Sport Central tonight – but Blake doesn’t want to hear such talk in the Eagles locker room.
Newcastle are targeting three wins out of three in the run up to Christmas as they look to move out of the middle of the BBL rankings and towards their customary title challenge.
But the Eagles managing director reckons over-confidence will undermine their attempts to reel back the Mersey Tigers.
Having recruited the talented Taner Adu from Plymouth, Blake reckons the Pirates are a different side from the team that were routed in the North East in October.
And he knows they will be forced to regret it if they give Essex a chance.
“It is not going to be easy against Essex – we can’t fall into that trap,” Blake (pictured right) said.
“We just can’t be complacent and I really don’t think that Essex are the same team that we played in October.
“Taner Adu is a very good player – they were missing someone who could shoot the ball and they have that now. This is not a walkover game.
“Just because of what happened last time there might be a few people thinking that, but I don’t think our players will be of the same opinion. For a start they’ve had a two-week break so I’m sure they’ll be absolutely raring to go. And secondly they want to make up for the performance against Worthing.
“It’s important that they make a strong start and put some points on the board so they can get away from the Pirates early on.”
The Eagles stuttered to victory last time out against Worthing Thunder, needing a late spurt to overcome the BBL strugglers.
But Blake refuses to read too much into their laboured performance – even if it does leave a sour taste in the mouth.
“I don’t think we should really be getting too concerned about the Worthing game, even if it was a disappointment to us all how we played,” he said.
“Worthing wasn’t a great performance but really, looking at it, Joe (Chapman) and Trey (Moore) should not have played in that game because they were injured. And we were missing Fab (Flournoy) as well so it was a unique set of circumstances.
“Even then we managed to go ten points ahead.
“The real problem that we had there was that we then subsequently let Worthing back into the game, which is not something that the Eagles generally do.
“I would have thought that Fab will have the players up for it and there is no doubt that we want to start moving up that table.
“Now that we’re back on Sky, I keep seeing the table flashed up on screen and it says 6th or 7th.
“I think that is a source of frustration for all of us. But we need to start winning games if we’re going to do something about it.”
