For the first time this season, the St. Aloysius Flashes will be at home at Farrell Stadium when they host Thomastown (1-0) tonight at 7:30.

The Flashes come in 0-2 with losses coming to rivals Natchez Catherdral and St. Andrew’s on the road.

Mistakes hurt coach Jim Taylor’s team in both games, but St. Andrew’s high-powered offense didn’t make things any better for St. Al in last week’s 56-21 loss.

Thomastown will bring in another strong offensive club based on its 47-0 shellacking of Tchula Marshall on Aug. 26. In that game, Dameon Brown rushed for two touchdowns (55 and 77 yards) and caught two TD passes (48 and 18 yards). He also threw a 52-yard TD pass. He had a hand or foot in 33 of his team’s points.

“We saw a film from last year on them but nothing this year. But from all indications we’ve heard their big and their fast,” Taylor said. “The Marshall coach told us that you pretty much had to double-team their nose guard and don’t let No. 11 (Brown) get the ball.

“They’ve got very good athletes, maybe not as refined as St. Andrew’s, but the raw skills are there and they are big strong kids. This presents us with a different type task.”

Being in school all week as brought a sense of normalcy back to the football team.

“We’ve had some pretty good practices this week and we’ve made some headway. Having a full week of school has certainly helped,” Taylor said.

The addition of Hurricane Katrina evacuees Chris Baer, John Buckman and Noah Slater could be felt more this week as the former Brother Martin players from New Orleans have gotten more comfortable with the Flashes’ system.

“A couple of them may start on defense and all three will fill in on offense. We’re playing Baer at cornerback and the other two at linebacker,” Taylor said. “That’s allowed us to move one of our regular linebackers out to corner, where he is better suited. They basically give us more depth because we can rest more people who were going both ways.”

Buckman was the primary kick returner against St. Andrew’s, returning four kicks for an average of 26 yards per return.

The Flashes’ ground-based offense is led by tailback Alex Halinski who rushed for 147 yards in the St. Andrew’s game.