SAINTS TAUGHT A FOOTBALLING LESSON
By Louie Bulzomi
Gol Gol has earned the right to renew festivities with Werrimull in the MFL Grand Final after terminating Bambill’s season in fine style by 61 points at No. 3 Oval, 22.12 (144) to 11.17 (83), in yesterday’s Preliminary Final.
Outside of Sonny Lindsey’s eight goals, the main point of difference was the superior efficiency of the Hawks’ disposal by foot throughout the game; underlined further when, on far too many occasions rebounding from defence, the Saints could only find an unattended Hawk jumper.
The Saints started to the San Mateo Avenue end and won the first clearance through Justin Merrett. After both sides scragged and fumbled for a couple of minutes, Lindsey scored the first major from a Dean McDowall assist.
Seconds later, Nick Rodi took a beautiful diving mark from a David Gray centre take-away as Gol Gol got their running game going. But Bambill managed to slow things down and take control of general play, thanks mainly to the hard work of Andrew Gibson, Luke Hubble and Nathan Davis in defence.
Yet for all of Bambill’s good recovery work, conversion became a problem; David Hall the main culprit amongst four consecutive behinds despite providing a solid target. As a result, Gol Gol made them pay through goals to Lindsey and centre half back-turned-centre half forward John Thompson, and some exquisite parrying by Dion Collins and Tony Albert.
Bambill finally hit the scoreboard the right way with goals to Brant Reid (after a great Michael Hickey tackle on 50) and Hall to bridge the gap to 13 points at quarter time.
As was the case leading up to quarter time, big Saint Ryan McClelland won the majority of the hitouts early in the second. But his Hawk counterpart Tim Murphy was sensational in standing firm and hardly allowing any to go to advantage as Gol Gol got on top again through the fleet-footedness of Darren Brown and Clint Burdett.
Lindsey proved far too much of a handful for opponent Paul Lewis as he booted four champagne-like goals from a myriad of distances and played his part in a chain of seven consecutive Hawk goals, who rounded out the half a commanding 56 points clear.
Desperate changes were made to Bambill’s structure in the third term; one of which paid immediate dividends with Hubble moving forward and scoring a goal two minutes in. But the Saints continued to make uncharacteristic skill errors that cost them dearly, with Jason Hunt, Simon Dean and McClelland all involved in kicking straight to the opposition coming out of defence.
Lindsey failed to add another major after missing three routine opportunities in the quarter, but the lively Thompson was able to pick up where Lindsey left off with a cameo performance of multiple intercepting marks, three goals and a goal assist to Kaleb Sherwell.
The final quarter was merely about pride for the Saints, who battled on to win the term 6.5 to 5.1. Hubble’s four second-half goals, and the never-say-die efforts of Merrett, Luke Keating and Simon Kelly, were the only bright lights on a dirty afternoon for Bambill.
Gol Gol, on the other hand, were extremely blessed to not have a repeat of what happened to Burdett last week as he was practically untouchable all day. Murphy, Albert, Gray and Brown were also brilliant, as were the backline led solidly by Collins, Hayden McQualter, Ben Sobkowiak and Shaun McInerney.
Last Modified on 03/09/2012 09:54