NEAFL players to watch: Sam Frost

While he’d always prefer to be playing senior football, Sam Frost’s consistent season as a mainstay of the UWS GIANTS side has helped them make a real run towards the NEAFL Eastern Conference title.

“It’s been generally a pretty good season,” Frost said.

“I think the game style we are trying to build is flowing through the senior and reserves side so we’ve been fairly consistent with that.

“Some games our contested ball drops off but generally the season’s been pretty strong for us.”

After being the GIANTS’ number one pick in the 2011 Rookie Draft, Frost pushed his way on to the senior list to play three games in the GIANTS’ debut year. After a strong pre-season and NAB Cup campaign, he played two games early in this season but has been plying his trade in the NEAFL since.

“My year has been not too bad,” he said.

“My form dropped off through the middle part of the season having started well and playing two senior games early in the year.

“Towards the end of the year, maybe the last eight of nine rounds, my form has picked back up and I’ve been fairly happy with my development and how I’ve been playing.”

A blistering back-half of the year by the UWS GIANTS saw them clinch the last spot for the NEAFL Eastern finals, but after demolishing Eastlake last weekend, the side looks set to give the title a real crack.

“It’s exciting for us, coming into the finals with that sort of form,” Frost said.

“We really hit our strides late in the year with a couple of big wins and just sticking to our structures and following through on what the coaches want has helped us with a few good wins.

“We’re expecting to go all the way in the NEAFL finals, that’s what the coaches want and that’s what the players are looking for so we’re very optimistic about the finals series.”

This weekend will see the GIANTS head to Canberra for their second road-trip in as many weeks, this time to face Ainslie, again in an elimination final.

“We try and prepare the same as we would any other week,” he said.

“We do a little but of scouting on our opposition and really focus in on what the coaches want from us in terms of game style and how we want to play but it’s similar preparation to any other week.

“We’ll go in hard and we’re expecting to win, it should be a good performance.”

Frost said though the senior side have won just one game for the year, there were plenty of positives to take out of the 2013 season.

“It gets tough at times not winning many games but the coaches told us we’re heading in the right direction and we can all see the development and improvement week-in week-out so that’s what we can take out of the year,” he said.

“Going into reserves finals is very exciting for the club, obviously it’s the first time we’ve gone into any sort of finals series as a group and we’re trying to develop winning habits and create a winning culture that will hopefully hold up, ideally in AFL finals.”