Hawks get good news on Adam Ballinger's back woes

Wollongong's chances of conquering Perth on Friday night have increased with Adam Ballinger passed fit to play.

Slowed by back pain on Wednesday, Ballinger felt 100 per cent better when he woke on Thursday and confirmed his intentions to take on the Wildcats.

‘‘It should be fine. The plane ride might be a problem, but I can recover when I get there,’’ the 2a05cm forward said.

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Ballinger was one of his side’s best players in last week’s first-round games against Townsville and Sydney.

He is confident his back will hold up to the rigours of an expected intense duel with the titleholders.

‘‘It flares up every now and then, but it’s been a couple of years since the last time and it’s just a management thing,’’ he said.

‘‘Something just happens and it flares up. I know from playing with it for so long when it needs rest and when it doesn’t. It can lock up and spasm out, but it hasn’t done any of that.’’

Perth will be without the highly competitive Greg Hire, one of their key bench players. Taking Hire’s place is forward Mathiang Muo.

‘‘Every team, no matter how well you did the year before, you’re always coming into a new season kind of feeling everything out, so now’s as good a time as any to go in there,’’ Ballinger said of the trip to Perth.

‘‘I’m sure we’ll play hard, but we have to better than we were in the first two games.’’

The Cats will be hungry to open their account after last week’s season-opening home loss to New Zealand.

‘‘We always seem to play Perth after they’ve lost at home,’’ Hawks captain Oscar Forman said.

‘‘We have to make sure we come out aggressively and compete.’’

Wollongong started the season with a 92-83 defeat of Townsville last Friday and went down 86-83 to Sydney the following night.

‘‘We put ourselves in the game with a chance to win, so we took positives away from the game,’’ centre Luke Nevill said.

The Hawks play Cairns on Sunday evening at WIN Entertainment Centre, their fourth game of seven in a busy October schedule.

Cairns started their season with a statement-making road trip, beating Adelaide by 10 on Friday and thrashing Melbourne by 28 on Sunday.

The Taipans host Melbourne on Friday night before squaring off with Wollongong on Sunday.