Round 3 saw both Under 16s teams for the first time playing on the same day, unfortunately miles apart but fortunately spread enough through the day that we could double up a few boys to help with numbers.
It was Springwood Gold first up, kicking the dew off the ground at home to Coorparoo, with 19 enthusiastic footballers ready to go. No under 14s boys to help us out this week unfortunately as they were playing at the same time down the road at Beenleigh but we had enough and we thought we could give our visitors a good competitive game of footy. Coorparoo, like us, had found the going tough to date but the battle of the bottom 2 teams promised to be a good game of footy. Coorparoo looked to have a bit of a size advantage but maybe the early dewy conditions could work in our favour.
Unfortunately for our boys the tale of the tape shows that Coorparoo were just that bit more polished and experienced right across the ground. They had a pretty good run and spread and they used the ball a bit better than we did. As the ground dried out their talls started marking the footy in dangerous places and try as we might we just couldn’t put enough scoreboard pressure on them. We had plenty of inside 50s but a lack of experience in body positioning and contested marking saw the ball come out fairly easily a bit too often. Despite this though once again the endeavour of the group was outstanding. Despite losing Jayden Ruscoe to a broken collarbone in the second quarter, bringing us down to 18, and various little niggles, bringing us down to 17 on the ground too many times, the boys battled on manfully for the entire game. The scoreboard never blew out and we played patches of really good football. Heads up boys and our goal is simply just to keep improving every week and I have no doubt we can do that.
It was a day where every player could look back and pick out some good contributions that they made to the game, being their accountability to their opponent, their tackling stats (team - 49 by the way, outstanding again), their talk etc. Alee Ingabire was outstanding all around the ground, Ryan Davies stood tall again, Brock Meredith was a great target up at centre half forward and Harley Storey was awesome again in the last line. Omar Alahwala had his second good game in a row and Dylan Keggan really impressed in easily his best game for the season. Benny McDonald rucked tirelessly all day on his own and the twins, Kayne and Ethan Hackett were busy. Apologies to quite a few others so well done everyone.
Goalkickers; Brock Meredith 2, Jack Leahy 1, Ben McDonald 1
Scores: Coorparoo 13-12-90 def Springwood Gold 4-6-30
Running duties done and dusted it was off to Everton with a car load of boys, via Subway and Maccas, to take on the Wolves in the Springwood Navy Division 2 clash. Both teams had won their first two games and so it promised to be a tough encounter. Going to Everton didn’t seem like an away game as this was our 4th visit there in 7 weeks and it was officially now our home away from home. We knew the ground well and had played well there during grading so it didn’t hold any demons for us. We had played Everton there earlier in the year during grading and had a good win that day but we weren’t hanging our hat on that as grading game form can always be a bit hard to read. Our bench was full of boys who had just played the early game plus Jordy Bacic who was torn between wanting to help his team out and looking after himself for his MetEast schoolboy commitments this week up in Cairns. We found middle ground by using him as sparingly as we could and it worked out well as he had an impact whenever he came on and he got through the game unscathed. Well done Jordy and all the best this weekend. We also welcomed Callum Eddy to the Puma fold, virtually straight out of the car from Cobram and onto the paddock for us, he knew virtually no one but had an immediate impact in his first game, and will only get better once he gets to know us all and how we go about it.
What promised pregame to be a good contest was exactly that, all day. We only trailed the once all day and that was early in the first quarter but we were never comfortable. Every time we got a bit of a break they came back at us and half way through the last quarter there was only a couple of goals in it. To each and everyone’s credit they kept up the pressure and the run and the ball movement to eventually run out winners by 31 points. Sounds a fair bit but like last week against Wests the scoreboard doesn’t show how hard we had to work for the entire 80 minutes to get that win. It really does look as though this is a very even competition, the most even I have been involved with in all my years of coaching, and no game will be an easy one. I might be wrong but at the moment I don’t see a lot of blow out games this year and that’s a good thing for the competition. The best way to improve as a player is to have to work hard for your kicks and your rewards and if in every game you are a chance to lose if you drop off and a chance to win if you work hard then we will have some terrific players around the club in the years ahead.
Jindalee this week at Jindalee (3 away games out of 4 so far so hopefully we have some home games soon) on Friday night and I just hope everyone understands that ladder positions at this stage of the season mean nothing. Jindalee are a good side with 4 Taipans rep players (Saunter, Motu, Golledge and Quinert) and a host of high vote getters from the 14s last year and on their home ground (which is a very difficult ground to get your bearings on) they will be more than a handful. We should all be looking forward to another challenge boys.
Final scores Springwood 12-10-82 def Everton 7-9-51
Best players are always hard to pick out but special mentions to Reece Adams, Rhys Murdoch and Matt Iervese in defence, our midfield group of Lincoln Opbroek, Nate Murcutt, Callum Eddy, Matt Leadbeater, Aidan Dipietro, Jacob Mitchell and Ben O’Sullivan, and up forward Dan Willaton with 5 goals was a handful and Hayden Day, Jared Denny, Rocket Menz and Jack Darby were always busy. Votes were once again very difficult to work out and once again apologies to plenty as there were no weak links over the whole ground and it was a great team effort. Beating teams like Everton takes exactly that, contributions from everyone. Looking forward to playing Everton again, they play a similar style to us, and they play in the right spirit so they will be fantastic games and we will have to be right on our guard when we do.
Goalkickers: Dan Willaton 5, Callum eddy 2, Jared Denny 2, Matt Leadbeater 1, Jacob Mitchell 1, Hayden Day 1
3-0 is a great start but we have a lot of work and improvement in us before this season is over. See you all at training.
Cheers
Steve
Last Modified on 22/05/2012 14:29