Well that certainly didn’t go to plan. Actually a pretty tough report to write this one, I thought about not bothering but that would be a bit of a cop out. As a team we take the pats on the back together and as a team we cop the kicks up the backside together, so if my part of getting a kick up the bum is having to write a pretty painful account of what happened yesterday then so be it. Here goes, it might actually be therapeutic.
What an opportunity it was, 3 teams equal on top on points with just percentage separating us, ourselves, Redcliffe and Alex Hills. Redcliffe were probably always going to beat a depleted Morningside (which they did comfortably) so the winner out of us and Alex Hills would claim the other top 2 spot, get a week off next week and then get 2 opportunities to get to the Grand Final. The loser would go straight into Elimination Finals next week (a bit tough on any side that has finished top 3 and only lost 3 games, but that’s what happens with a 6 team final series). Despite still missing key players in Jack (broken collarbone),Mitch (ankle) and Brandon who was clearly not well (in hindsight he probably shouldn’t have played) we went in with a side that to me, on paper anyway, looked more than capable of winning the game.
We certainly didn’t go in over confident, I went to watch Alex Hills against Beenleigh the week before and was very impressed with their run and ball movement, especially once dewy conditions dried out a bit, so I knew what we were up against. We had some plans too for a couple of their playmakers and we also practiced some new centre bounce set ups to try to curb their on ballers influence. No we knew how tough it would be and that we needed to run and run as hard as we ever have before, and we needed to be 100% accountable to our opponents and not allow them space to run in and use their ball skills. Easier said than done as it turned out.
The weather was awesome, bright and sunny and no real wind advantage so should be a cracker of a game. We started brilliantly, 3 centre clearances and 2 goals 1 to nothing in the first 5 minutes, in fact the ball never found its way into our back half. Unfortunately that was pretty much as good as it got all day. A free kick and 50 metre penalty from their first foray forward saw them get a soft goal and they were away. After that they kicked 12 of the next 14 goals to completely dominate the game and really show us how to play hard running footy. Apart from a 10 minute period late in the second quarter where Jared kicked a couple in a row to get us back to 16 points we were never in the hunt at all. We didn’t kick a goal in the entire second half and that was really disappointing, we just seemed to lose all semblance of a forward structure and no one apart from the same blokes week in week out really wanted to take the game by the scruff of the neck and do something about it.
It was one of those days where nothing seemed to go right, the bounce of the ball, the oppositions mis-kicks that still found a target somehow, fingertips just touching the footy on its way through our goals, fingertips just missing as it went through theirs etc etc. We tried so many things in terms of positional changes but nothing seemed to spark anything in us. That’s taking nothing away from how Alex Hills played, they showed us up purely and simply and gave us a football lesson. Well done to them, we might not get to play them again this year but I just hope each and every one of the Pumas players learns from what Alex Hills did and takes that with them on their footy journey. Their tackling was as good as I have seen, I always have rated us as a good tackling team but they were better than us yesterday (even though we still had a a higher than average 37, but that might be because they had so much of the ball). They never gave us anything at all, even big Rhys wasn’t safe, they were all over him, showing no fear at all, it was actually pretty good to watch, they are obviously well drilled and well coached.
On to the good news and there is some, we are still alive. We made the finals and that alone at least is an achievement. Along the way don’t forget that we have beaten every team in our competition, although obviously some teams are in better shape than what they were early in the season. We spent a fair chunk of the year on top of the ladder so we are no mugs and we are capable of playing better footy than what we played yesterday. Yesterday we just weren’t prepared to work hard enough and we just gave our opponents too much time and space and as I said not enough were prepared to try and do anything about it. Now our season is a week by week proposition and that starts with this week elimination final against Morningside. Don’t be fooled by the score line against Redcliffe yesterday they had about 8 of their regulars out as they had nothing really to play for, and they will be back to full strength, or close to it, by next Sunday. We have a lot of hard work and soul searching to do this week before we are ready to try to make amends for a disappointing day yesterday.
Final scores Alex Hills 13-10-88 def Springwood 4-8-32
Goals: Jared 2, Jake 1, Ryan 1
Best players: Brighton and Rhys down back never stopped trying, Matt as always in the middle busted his gut and Jared, double teamed for most of the day, could hold his head up. Lachy came into it after a quiet start (and a bit of a rev up) and Jack Mackey and Jack Taylor stuck to their pre-determined roles pretty diligently I thought. Others did some good things at times but really there weren’t too many 4 quarter performers and I think if everyone thought deeply about their games they would agree. Alex Hills had contributors all over the ground, all game, and we just didn’t, we had too many players that just didn’t fire a shot at all.
Anyway that’s done and dusted now, time to move forward, we will make some changes to the line-up, some positional changes and tweak the game plan a bit and we will be ready to go next week, really looking forward to the real Springwood Pumas turning up next week. See you all at training.
Cheers
Steve
Last Modified on 12/08/2013 11:51