Broncos hope to play better at home against Owls

The Alvirne High School football team enters Friday’s game against Timberlane in a different position than some outside the program might have expected.

A playoff team a year ago, the Broncos (0-2 in Division II, 0-3 overall) have struggled in opening the season winless.

In each game, Alvirne has been close, but hasn’t found a way to pull through. Against Merrimack last week, the Broncos led 7-6 early in the second quarter and trailed 14-7 at halftime, but fell behind 28-7 in the second half.

“We’re still pretty inexperienced,” Alvirne coach Bobby Nimblett said. “Our big thing is talking about getting better. Let’s get better this week and hopefully things work out. Hopefully we’re playing our best football at the end. We’re trying to look for consistency throughout the program.”

The outside talk of a repeat, playoff performance likely hasn’t helped Alvirne.

“We talked about it through the offseason,” Nimblett said. “We saw how hard it was to get to the playoffs. We were going to have to work harder to get back and hopefully make another step. You start to think, hey we’re pretty good. We made the playoffs and we have some pieces back. Maybe they don’t realize it take all 11 positions, not five returning.”

The Broncos get a visit from another team that has playoff aspirations of its own, when Timberlane comes to Hudson Friday for a 7 p.m. kickoff.

The Owls are coming off a 38-26 win over Manchester West, after back-to-back losses to Pinkerton and Bishop Guertin.

Timberlane is led by running back Nick Lawrence, who had 296 yards rushing against the Blue Knights. The Owls didn’t attempt a pass against West and had almost 400 yards of offense. Quarterback Nate Lawrence, Nick’s brother, was unavailable in last week’s game due to a concussion.

Nimblett is hoping his team is capable of putting on a good performance at home, something the Broncos have oddly struggled with at times.

“We’ve been better on the road,” he said. “I tease these guys that I’m going to have two buses show up and take us for an hour ride and then we’ll stop back at Alvirne and go. I don’t know if settles them in, but we’ve been a better road football team. We need to start winning football games no matter where we are.”

The Broncos and Owls will kickoff at 7 p.m. on Friday in Hudson.