Tiger football home opener Thursday

Friday night lights will be held on Thursday this week as the Manchester Music Festival bumped the Tiger football home opener up a day early.

Clay will host the Harlan Green Dragons at Tiger Stadium on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

Coach Mike Sizemore says scouting the Green Dragons was impossible this week.

“Due to an opening week cancellation by an out-of-state opponent on Harlan, we haven’t been able to gather much information about their team this year. That said, we know they always have the potential to put a competitive team on the field. We have to worry about us this week and do what we do without a ton of individualized opponent game planning due to the lack of film and information on their team going in,” Sizemore said. “ I have always said from day one that we want to have a program and a systematic way of doing things here, and I feel in situations like this it's a benefit because we've run our system now for several years here and this week we will have to be able to adjust during the game and attack whatever the opponent is giving us without a ton of pregame planning, and you can only do that if you have a systematic approach to the game.”

It's been a smooth process motivating his team for their opponent this week. The coach says his players look forward to seeing a massive crowd on Thursday.

“With the lack of film and studying our opponent this week, we must focus on improving ourselves. We need great effort and pride in playing football for the black and gold. We want to see our guys play fast and physically all over the field. We want a team-based approach where we are the most exciting team to play on the field, and you really can't tell who is scoring or who is having individual success because our guys are fired up for their teammates to succeed. We know this week will be a tough game on a short week of game prep, so we will have to put in a great effort to get out there and have success for the home crowd on Thursday night,” he said.