Newcastle Olympic coach Joel Griffiths wants "a response" from his charges when they host Lake Macquarie in round five of National Premier Leagues Northern NSW at Darling Street Oval on Sunday.
Olympic have made a mixed start to their season, beating Broeadmeadow 2-1 then going down 3-1 to Charlestown before having the bye last weekend.
Lake Macquarie have played just once as the competition enters round five this weekend with wet weather in the region continuing to wreak havoc on sporting fixtures.
The Roosters have not played since opening their 2022 campaign with a 1-1 draw against Azzurri in round two, but Griffiths was preparing his charges for a tough hit-out.
"They took a good point against Charlestown in their only game and they're a team that we're not going to take for granted," Griffiths said. "They've got a lot of young kids in the team who are willing to work and we need to be on our toes to get some sort of result."
Griffiths felt a "lack of concentration and discipline" cost Olympic against Azzurri and wanted an improved performance without the ball this weekend.
"It's learning from your mistakes and trying to get better as a group, and I think we've done that this week," Griffiths said.
"We've had a good training week. Considering all of the bad weather, we've actually got some really good sessions in.
"So I'm just looking for a response now. A response that, are we contenders or are we pretenders, is pretty much what I'm looking for."
Lake Macquarie coach Keelan Hamilton said the Roosters were keen to move on from a disrupted season start.
"The first thing is we're looking forward to hopefully playing," Hamilton said. "We've only had one game so far, so we're very eager to get on the pitch and keep trying to build our football. In terms of Olympic, it's going to be a difficult test."
Both coaches expected to have close to all players available for the clash.
Broadmeadow will be looking to back up their first win of the season when they host Edgeworth at Magic Park on Saturday in the only other round-five game set to still go ahead.
The Cooks Hill-Charlestown match set down for Thursday night was postponed, as were the Maitland-Valentine and Adamstown-Weston clashes scheduled for Saturday.
