A mixed day for the Pumas with Navy having a strong win against Everton but unfortunately Gold getting a hammering in a huge mismatch. Let’s start with Gold:
Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to the game as it was scheduled at the same time as the Navy game but I had enough of a chat with coach Voss and a few of the players to get the general gist of what happened. First and foremost the AFLBJ got this one really wrong. Now that isn’t a criticism of the AFLBJs, far from it, it is a very difficult job to grade 115 teams. The bye last week for Gold probably didn’t help either as there wasn’t as much information on Springwood Gold for the grading committee to base their decision on. Anyway what is done is done and now the most important thing is for the Gold boys to keep their heads up and move forward. You don’t take too much out of a game like that, you just throw away the game tape and look forward to next week. Next week’s opponent, Kedron Grange, copped a similar flogging at the hands of Caboolture so hopefully, if we can find enough players, it should be a much more competitive game.
One of the few positives to come out of the game was the character shown by the boys in never giving up. The tackle count of 6, 9, 12 and 18 confirms that. Okay some might argue that you should have a high tackle count if the opposition has the ball 90% of the game but I take the other view, and that is that it shows that as the game went on they actually increased their efforts in trying to stop the opposition, they could easily have simply given it up as being too hard and had 3 or 4 tackles, but no they had a whopping 18! Gary and I are really proud of that, that is a group of boys with a lot of spirit, well done. Put this game into perspective too, Beenleigh played against possible Division 2 team, Aspley Brown, last week and were competitive, they only lost by 16 points to Ipswich who themselves only lost by 16 to Kenmore, who beat Springwood Navy! Beenleigh this week are up against the undefeated to date Kenmore so that is how highly regarded they are by the AFLBJ (which again begs the question, why did they play a Div 4 team?). So the good news is that type of match up won’t happen again.
Everyone knows the score so nothing to be gained by reprinting it and the best players I will put as everyone because, let’s face it, to have to go through that and come out the other side without too many mental scars well I reckon everyone deserves a pat on the back for that. Special thanks though to the 4 Under 14s, Caleb Kennedy, Mitch Osland, Jake Keeble and Brodan Goeppel who stepped up to help us out, I really hope this hasn’t put you off helping us out again in the future, well done boys.
The better news for the day was Navy’s good showing against Everton on Everton’s home ground. Last year Everton were Division 2 premiers and they gave Springwood a couple of beltings on the way. A few of our boys played in those games and no doubt so did a few of theirs. None of this was mentioned at all before the game but I reckon a few boys were pretty keen to show that they had grown up and weren’t going to be pushed around. Unfortunately due to the scheduling conflict with the Gold game, and a few injuries, we could only take 19 up there but in some ways that may have helped. 19 players (a bench of 1) forces a lot more stability on the ground as less rotations and whilst it means that invariably tired legs becomes a factor later in the game it gives boys an opportunity to really settle in to their positions without the fear of being rotated off.
The first half of the game we really dominated with slick ball work, strong tackling and hard running and as a result we had the game pretty much sewn up at half time. We led by 53 and in fact Everton hadn’t kicked a goal. Our defensive work was first class. The second half was a bit more of a struggle as some tired legs started to have an impact, a result of that was a falling off of the skill level and also the willingness to run hard to space. Still, we managed to outscore them 7-1 to 3-7 in the second half (all 3 of their goals being more from disciplinary lapses by us than anything else, which is certainly one area we need to clean up) so that was still really pleasing. The tackle count was good all day and that was a huge improvement on our last up effort against Kenmore where we fell away badly after half time. The other really pleasing aspect of the game was the across the ground contributions from everyone, we had no passengers and everyone can look back over the game and see where they had a positive impact on the game and the end result. Awesome.
Final scores Springwood Navy 15-8-98 def Everton 3-9-27
Best players – All, it really is too hard to pick out individuals as that wouldn’t do justice to many others.
Goals – Jack Darby 4, Aiden Dipietro 3, Lachy Willaton 2, Reece Adams 1, Nate Murcutt 1, Lincoln Opbroek 1, Jacob Mitchell 1, Benny O’Sullivan 1, Alex Smith 1
It is way too early to go over the top with a win in grading, just as it is way too early to read anything into the Gold game so it is really important that we continue to train well and keep learning and improving. Once the season proper gets underway a lot of these grading teams will be stronger (as we will be) and it will be a highly competitive season. We haven’t won anything yet but we have made some fantastic early progress. This week Navy takes on Jindalee with both sides a bit depleted through rep duties (btw congrats Jordy, Hayden and Jack and huge commiserations to Jacob who unfortunately got cut at the last minute). Jindalee have always been a very competitive group and are always up around Division 1 or 2 so they will be a very tough team to get over. We will probably only have 17 or 18 players but that doesn’t mean that we can’t give a good account of ourselves, the one thing we have this year is depth, every boy who plays in Division 2 is more than capable of doing so and that should give us confidence in any challenge. As I said earlier Gold are up against Kedron Grange in what should be a much better game to play in. At present Gold only have 17 available players so hopefully we can get a couple of 14s again to help out, that would be awesome.
Go the Pumas
Last Modified on 24/04/2012 13:41