Well that was a little too close!! Top v Bottom isn’t supposed to go like that and after consideration over the last day or two here are the reasons, I think, for the closeness of the game.
2/ Kenmore, with an obvious confidence in their new line up really came to play and we didn’t. That was evident in our warm up where we just went through the motions. We kicked the first goal of the game and then just went through the motions for the next 10 minutes while they kicked a couple. The last 5 minutes of the first was ok, we lifted a bit, but we still went in a couple of points down. We worked hard for the next 2 and a bit quarters against a good outfit to get ourselves out to a 33 point lead early in the last quarter, then we shut up shop for the day. We thought we had it won and we stopped working hard, simple as that. The strong Kenmore side saw that we had left the door open a bit and they barged through kicking 4 in 10 minutes to be just 8 points down with 5 minutes to go. Luckily we lifted for the last 5 and held them out and kicked the last goal on the final siren to win by 15 points. Lesson there is never switch off, good sides will make you pay and they very nearly did.
3/ There were not enough contributors on the day. Too many players just failed to fire a shot and have any influence on the game. Over the last few weeks it has been really hard to pick the best players as there has been such a big spread of contributors, this game the best players were easy to find. Too many left it to too few to get the job done, too many were happy just to watch what was happening and not have any impact on the game. 10 out of 22, that’s almost half, did not make a tackle!! On a day like that when there are a lot of contests that is totally unacceptable!!
4/ The second half saw us concede 16 free kicks!! This has been a thorn in our side all year and when you give the opposition the footy that many times the good sides will make you pay, and they did. We have to control our free kicks conceded, we cannot continue giving the opposition free possession of the footy.
5/ The conditions may not have suited us either, well it certainly seemed to suit them better, they were much cleaner with their hands and their ball movement, we were fumbly and panicky and did not play wet weather footy very well at all. Conditions this week coming up down at Jimboomba will be the same, even though the rain may disappear their ground will be wet and so we have to be better than we were on Sunday. We have to be more prepared to put our head over the footy and win the contest, too few were prepared to do that and that was disappointing.
6/ We got smashed at the bounces and the throw ins, our midfielders won enough ball around the ground to keep us in the contest but they just won way too many clearances. We had our number one ruckman out, as mentioned earlier, and a good hard ball winning midfielder but we should have worked it out a bit better in the middle but we didn’t. We have work to do there at training if we can get on the ground on Wednesday.
On reading all of that you would think that we lost the game but as I have always believed sometimes it’s not that you win or that you lose but it’s how you win or how you lose. How we won on Sunday is what this little rant today is all about. It simply wasn’t a good enough performance and we simply have to be better if we are going to be one of the top sides this year. It was an important lesson for us, a lesson that fortunately didn’t cost us 4 points but geez it very nearly did!
Lost in all of that was the fact that it was Jack Leahy’s 150th game, what a great milestone and what a great effort by Jack, well done. I was so relieved at the end of the game that it wasn’t a milestone game he or anyone else would remember for the wrong reasons so we sang the song loud in the rooms, with Jack in the middle, not as a reflection of the way we played but as a reflection of how much respect everyone has for Jack, congratulations mate.
So the final scores Springwood 9-8-62 def Kenmore 7-5-47
Best players as I said much easier to find this week but Rhys, Brighton and Jack Taylor across half back were magnificent, Jared was superb all day at centre half forward, Adam at full back was inspirational, Ryan one out in the ruck deserves a mention for perseverance, Jack kicked 4 and could have had 7 or 8 and Lachy and Matt battled hard all day around the ground. Just on Matt, our skipper, interesting to hear a couple of people comment on how they thought Matt was down on the day. Maybe he was a bit but put into perspective how good has he been in every game this year? He only needs to be down a little bit for it to be noticeable, a bit like when Gary Ablett only gets 25 touches. If that were any other player who had Matt’s game on Sunday we would be singing his praises from the rooftops. Yeah I thought the skipper was still pretty good for us.
Goalkickers: Jack Leahy 4, Jared 3, Mitch 1, Jack Taylor 1
So Jimboomba this week, nice and early again down there at Jimboomba. Will we learn the lessons outlined above and front up ready to play and play well? Judging by the body language after the game Sunday I think a lot will be keen for redemption, so watch this space.
Cheers
Steve
Last Modified on 28/06/2013 16:38