Old Camberwell v De La Salle

Match Report

Even though we had our first win under our belt, the U19 Golds were still coming in as underdogs to our Round 3 encounter against Old Camberwell. Old Camberwell had won both of their first games by over 100 points but De La didn’t let that discourage them. The first quarter started as a tug of war before De La dropped off and allowed Camberwell to play some really high quality football. De La showed glimpses but some fundamental errors let us down at the final step, preventing us from troubling the scorers. De La trailing 0-21 at quarter time.

A bit of a rev-up at quarter time and De La finally awoke from its slumber. Calvin Lehr and Ben McLisky intercepting everything, switching the ball and kickstarting our offence from defensive 50.
Cornell, Burns and Khan helped transition the ball well but we were still failing to capitalise on a lot of control. De La still trailing at half time, 15-35. The third quarter started off promisingly, with Baker starting to find some of the ball and Maillard getting dangerous, De La was able to kick the first two goals of the quarter and narrow the lead down to under two goals. Pickles, Carlin and Ganas were all working hard and impacting the contest and the momentum was with us. Unfortunately, De La switched off for ¾ time early and allowed Old Camberwell to kick three consecutive goals in the five minutes leading up to the break. De La trailing by 28 points at the final break.

This U19 Gold side never backs away from a fight though and with full faith in the preseason they put in, the boys didn’t give up and dug deep, taking one last crack at stealing victory. Big men Tyquin and Georgelin went into next gear, working both ways to try and get the boys over the line. When Baker took one of the best species you will see at local footy and converted to reduce the deficit to 7 points with three minutes to go, anything was possible. With no time on though, Old Camberwell was able to milk every single second out of every stoppage, making it nearly impossible for us to get any game time in the last three minutes. Old Camberwell holding on to be 7 point winners. The boys should be proud of the efforts they put in and the potential they showed. The next step is putting the full four quarters together against Bulleen Templestowe next Saturday.