The Florala Wildcats learned some valuable lessons last week in their 28-6 loss to New Brockton. Now head coach Chris Buckler said the team has worked hard to prepare for this week’s challenge — Samson.

“I think going into this week we learned a lot Friday about ourselves, and where to put people,” Buckler said. “The biggest thing is that we’ve spent all week working on tackling. That’s what we probably messed up the worst on when it came to Friday’s game.

“We have dedicated ourselves to being a better, more fundamental team this week,” he said. “Even though we’re getting better everyday, we’re going to spend more time on (tackling).”

The last time Florala played Samson was in 2005, when the Wildcats fell 62-0.

Buckler said what he knows about Samson is they are a team with size, which it could play to his team’s advantage Friday night.

“We know that Samson is bigger, and they’re not as fast as New Brockton,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a dog fight at the end of the third, and beginning of the fourth quarter.”

Buckler said there are three important parts in the game against Samson.

“There are three keys to this game for us,” Buckler said. “No. 1, we’ve got to tackle better. No. 2, our offensive line has to work better as a unit. Right now, we’ve got a lot of individuals trying to do their own thing. We’re trying to shore up some of that on the offensive line.

“The last thing is we’ve got to be able to run the ball,” he said. “We did a good job of running the ball against New Brockton. We did not do a good job of throwing it. Our bread and butter is still running the ball.”

Buckler said players have the normal “bumps and bruises” to start the season, leading into Friday night’s contest.

One of the positives Buckler noticed last week was the crowd size at the stadium.

“We had a great crowd on Friday,” he said. “It was one of the biggest crowds we’ve had in I don’t know how many years. We had a huge and awesome crowd. The gate was really good for our program. We’re hoping to have this gate and excitement coming into this Friday, too.”

Kickoff is at 7 p.m. at Matthews Stadium.