With the last few weeks being almost entirely rainy, it was pleasant to be greeted by bright sunshine last Saturday, and to have it stay that way for the whole day.
The Warhawks travelled to Albert Ground where Malvern were hosting games for the day. An early morning text message, asking if my brother Mal might be able to play rang an alarm bell; Gino was scratching the bottom of the barrel for player numbers.
The Bendigo bus arrived with plenty of spare seats and we took the field with 9 and Malvern with 14.
I can keep this week’s report fairly short. Nine will always struggle badly against 14 and despite two MCC players (Peter “Rio” Allen and Ron “Lemon” Lowe) kindly helping out for the last half, the Warhawks could not make anything of their attack with short numbers and tired midfielders. The Malvern side were able to score at a steady rate for each quarter: 4 then 6 then 5 and a blitz at the end of 7 to send the message home with a final score of 22 to zero. And it could have been a lot worse because the Bendigo defence actually did a very good job of keeping the Malvern forward line at a distance and many shots went wide and into the goalies’ (first Ian Lock, and then Gino Iuliano) sticks. The Warhawk midfielders ran all day and our centres were able to win often at the faceoff.
But alas; in a game like this, where our older players are forced by circumstances to swap into the midfield, we’ll tend to get beaten for speed and fitness, especially by a top-four side like Malvern, which had many juniors in it and a bench of four.
Votes for the day went deservedly to Nick Goddard (3 club votes and one Association vote) and Mike Bell (2 club votes) for their unrewarded endeavour and hard running all day on the midfield and one club vote to Gino Iuliano for his great effort in defence, and later in goals (and truth be told, for busting a gut to get a team on the field each week).
Next week, we play Eltham at Maiden Gully, and we are going to need good numbers and solid practice to even make a small dent in them.
By the way, Will Kenny, one of our promising juniors, has been playing for Moreland U15s and scored 4 goals and two assists in a closed loss (7-6) to Eltham/Surrey Park on the weekend. We look forward to him making an appearance in seniors!
John Webb, Senior Player.
Last Modified on 11/07/2016 08:24