Match report – springwood pumas – Round 7
It was another great sunny morning at Wilston grange and after some hard and painful training sessions that the pumas had experienced, they were ready to face another great and very competitive side, Kedron Grange. It made it a tough day with no Schmidty, Jamie, Fitzy and Boof all unavailable. But With the boys coming off an fantastic win against Morningside and our opposition given a thumping 119 – 0 loss I think the boys were ready to show them what we were made of. Although Kedron Grange was not at their best last week, we still had to treat them with respect, as well as not being to cockie and expecting a win as we came out of the doors of our cars. During the warm ups we did not look like we were ready to put up a fight against the inform Kedron grange, we were tired, we weren’t focused and were mucking around this was not good at all as this led to our result.
When Hammy and I had led the team out onto the home ground of Kedron grange, we were all expected to put up another ruthless fight and give it our all. The siren had sounded to start the opening quarter, the boys were pumped, and we wanted the top of the leader board. As buddy won another great tap out the centres from both sides proved that they were ready to play as immediately there was another ball up. Finally the pumas centres found the ball and got the first clearance of the day, going down to centre half forward were nick really needed to work, as he did, scoring the first score of the day, a behind. While KD (Kedron Grange) were running out of options for the kick out our forwards did fantastically trying to lock the ball in to our forward line, as this resulted in the first goal of the day, by nick. The Pumas centres were doing great, but the game had not finished yet. As the boys were fighting for the ball with all their might KD finally got it down into their forward line. Freckles, Hammy, Pykee, Sam TPS and Tom Sullivan were doing a fantastic job guarding the goals not letting KD get the 6 points, they did this so well that they went into quarter time goalless.
The boys were up and ahead by 6 points, so they couldn’t drop off now, unless they wanted a win. The pumas came running back out of the huddle after Matty said his precious words to us, ready to take the score beyond what it already was. Matt had made a couple of changes to the game plan moving players to different spots, Such as me in the forward line, I was wrapped and I wanted to earn my spot so I had to prove I could play there. Buddy, Riley, Simmo, Jayden, TPS and Tom Sullivan were working extremely hard to get the ball down to be were all springwood players and fans wanted the ball to be (the forward line). They did this extremely well as James, cross, K-man, Scotty and I worked also just as hard to score the six points. As Tom Sullivan won the ball from a ruthless fight and kicked it long down to the forward line, K-man was extremely smart and lost his player wondering down inside the goal square as I picked up the ball, then James and Cross provided amazingly smart and strong shepherds, so that we could kick the ball to the lonely K-man in the goal square, resulting in a goal. Well done boys. Nearly an exact repeat happened as we won another quick clearance from the centre bounce into our forward line resulting in another goal, thanks to an un-selfish Scotty giving the hands off, and not doing a U-turn. It was great, because we were on fire, we really thought we had it by this stage we thought we could win. But what helped us is when our backline was strong and held their heads high, by keeping on feeding the ball into the forward line, resulting in more scores in the score boards. Hammy had proved he had his head over the ball, because he fought with all of his strength, body and might and then unfortunately he had his head clashed with someone else and was off to hospital, this really hurt us as a team not having our vice-captain.
Going into half time everyone was confident; we thought we had it in the bag. Because we were three goals up, we thought we had already won, we thought ‘oh yeah 3 goals up we got this’ so then, we slacked off a bit, and that really bit us in the backside.
KD came back up, the wanted the ball, the wanted the win, they wanted the 4 points; so really, they wanted the win more than we did. And the result showed. We started to get a bit selfish, and old habits started to creep in, and I can tell you what, from what happened to the team on Monday at training I don’t think it will happen again. Slowly after KD were creeping back up our main ruckman went down, and towards the end of the 3rd and the start of the 4th quarter we were really needing him as we were losing many of the centre clearances resulting in KD goals.
After the game Matty had brought us all into a huddle and had an intense chat to us about our performance, He was not happy at all, as many of my fellow teammates were not as well. We were all gutted and new that we had to improve on this. Matt mentioned that how we trained was appalling on Monday, Wednesday and especially before the game, he said, you train how you play, so now we really got to knuckle down and suffer the hard yards during training if we want to beat the well inform side, Cooparoo.
Let’s dig deep, stick together and keep our heads high. Let’s win it in 3 weeks’ time against the leading Cooparoo. We know we can do it boys.
Kedron/Grange: 46 – Springwood Pumas: 26
Jai Kennealy
Last Modified on 20/06/2012 08:04