19s
Our 19s knew nothing short of a win against last-placed Whittlesea would be enough or acceptable in their chase for a finals berth. After being dealt a tough card going against the wind in freezing conditions in the first quarter, keeping Whittlesea goalless for the first quarter was a good effort by the boys despite failing to register a major themselves. Cam Simpson’s making this writer sound like a broken record, but he had it on a string yet again early.
After being up by a couple of goals at half time, one of many poor third terms for the year left us trailing by 10 at the last break.
Repeat inside 50s, on the end of which Sam Billinge constantly found himself, were wasted with poor shots at goal in the last. The 19s made sure the Northcote faithful had a heart attack and then some, but after trailing for most of the last quarter a Daniel Brown roost into an open 50 found Sam Aanensen whose mongrel punt sailed through and gave us a three point lead, which was the final margin.
Tyson Old and Aiden Dani were good in the centre of the ground, and Jake Murray, though outsized considerably, played well in an important role on a monster full forward.
Reserves
Realistically closing in on a finals double chance, a win would have our reserves just one win adrift from the top two on the ladder.
With the breeze picking up for the reserves game, we would always be up against it kicking into it early. Going down three goals to one at the first change was far from a disaster for our boys, and for all the advantage Whittlesea took in the first, we took double with our turn in the second.
In a match defining third term, we actually extended our 13 point half time lead against the breeze.
A 22 point buffer was a huge ask for the visitors to overcome and it was clear their que was well and truly in the rack on the back of our complete domination. We piled on 6.4 to their mere 0.1 in a scintillating finish to the game.
Sim Andrews could well have kicked more than the six he did in his return from a long term injury, Jacob Mitchell was great with four of his own and Mick Naldrett was good as always.
Seniors
Whittlesea’s drought breaking win against our seniors was fresh in the minds of the boys, who, like the 19s, knew their finals hopes would only be kept alive with a win in inspirational captain Bronik Davies’ 100th game for the club.
Rain which was slowly getting heavier gave the game every chance of being a low scoring slog. A 12-6 score line in our favour at quarter time would attest to that, but it was by no means a slippery dog fight... yet.
We had six more scoring shots going into the main break yet still trailed by four in an underwhelming first half performance to say the least.
Inaccuracy was again an issue in the third, but the ball was entrenched in our forward half long enough for our back six to forget what the ball looked like in a five goal quarter.
Both heavy rain and a good last quarter performance left Whittlesea with no chance of a repeat of last time we met.
Jordan Collopy, Mannon Johnston and Damien Galofaro were all influential, and it would be doing Ash Close a huge injustice to not mention his absolute hanger.