Saugus, English set for Saturday’s showdown

It will be a clash of styles on Saturday afternoon (2:30) at Stackpole Field when Saugus plays host to Lynn English in a battle between NEC North and South teams.The Bulldogs come in with a 3-1 mark and riding the coattails of a 28-18 win over Danvers while the Sachems will have had 14 days to prepare for English after having a bye a week ago.”Saugus has some athletes and I’m afraid they’re going to sneak up on us,” English coach Peter Holey said. “They do pose some problems for us, so we just need to continue tackling well on defense and remain disciplined.”It will be a late start on Saturday because of the SAT’s being scheduled for the morning. And that is something that Holey is worried about.”I’m afraid that the kids are going to come out sluggish because of the tests in the morning,” Holey said. “But we just have to keep our development going.”The Bulldogs bounced back from a loss to Beverly with the win over Danvers last Friday. English got back the services of running back Jermaine Patterson, who had missed the game with the Panthers because of a separated shoulder.And with the Falcons paying attention to the English wide receivers and trying to limit the big play, the bruising running back helped lead the Bulldog ground attack as he rushed for a pair of touchdowns.”It’s important to me that we maintain the 60-40 ratio of running the ball,” Holey said. “And Jermaine gives us that. He wasn’t 100 percent last week, but he is better this week.”For Saugus, the bye week came at an opportune time. The Sachems were banged-up in a loss to Manchester-Essex and then lost to Salem two weeks ago. And for coach Mike Broderick, getting his players rested and healthy was huge.”The bye week did come at a good time. We get three of our starters back now, and it has given us some extra time to prepare for them,” Broderick said.Even with the extra week to ready for English’s spread attack, Broderick knows that shutting down Bulldog quarterback Tyllor MacDonald will be huge.”He is quick, athletic and everything he does seems to get positive yards,” Broderick said about the junior quarterback. “They score an awful lot and run a lot of plays.”The Sachems, however, also like to run a lot of plays out of their option-oriented attack. And that’s something that Broderick knows has to continue for his team to be successful on Saturday.”We want to control the game as much as we can. That’s always something we try to do,” Broderick said. “We want to maintain the tempo of the game and control the clock.”