The Bandits couldn’t back up from last Friday night’s thrilling victory over the Geelong Supercats with a win at Bendigo, but must bounce back against an undefeated Hobart outfit.

Despite sitting at 2-3, coach Brad Chalmers is happy with how the team is travelling and admits the tough draw to start the year will hold his side in good stead for the rest of the season. 

“We’re trying to keep some momentum and get another really solid win at home against a very good team,” Chalmers said.

“They’re 4-0, but they’ve had four home games and they’ve done a good job of particularly dominating the teams they’ve played so far.

“They’ll be fired up and certainly feeling really confident coming up here, so we’re going to have to attack that mindset and try to deflate them early.

“The boys are really focused on protecting the home court again and Hobart is travelling for the first time, so we really want to make it difficult for them coming here.

“I think we need to focus on how we’re going about it, I think there’s some really key things we need to do to get ourselves moving forward in the right direction.”

Chalmers knows there is plenty of room for improvement in defence.

“I think there’s some things there we’re not quite executing 100 per cent correctly, but the boys are working hard and I thought last week there were some signs,” he said.

“Bendigo had a couple of weeks to prepare for it because of the Easter break and that was their first game of the weekend, so they were able to get themselves up and about early.

“We were down three times and got back in front three times, but it was probably the last two or three minutes where we made some silly decisions defensively and offensively tailed off a little bit and they went on an 8-2 run to finish.

“I was really happy with how we played, it was just an execution thing and we were probably running out of a bit of steam at the last minute of the back-to-back.”

Chalmers believes the likes of Joel Spear, Sawyer Dearborn, Darcy Harding and Mitchell Newton hold the key to victories more so than imports TJ Robinson and Justin Browning.

“I thought he (Spear) was really good last weekend, it’s just a matter of him continuing to push his aggressiveness,” Chalmers said.

“We want him to be more aggressive with his shot and looking to create and continue to do what he has been doing the last few games, which is rebound and distribute the ball.

“We need those guys to fire up over the next few weeks and push us forward, because they’re probably going to be the difference makers in the end because we know what we’re going to get from some of the others.”