We travelled to Mentone to take on St Bedes in what was a huge game for a club. Not only did we get a chance to turn our form around and register a win, it was a major milestone for one of our club greats, with Sam Williams playing his 250th game. A truely fantastic personal achievement for a player who has shown great loyalty and dedication to our club. Five changes to the team who played a fortnight ago, which included welcoming two debutants into the team, Christian Algeri and Campbell Bedford.
We were treated to an extremely windy day down at Brindisi Street, clearly favouring one end. We kicked against the wind in the first quarter and our effort was strong. We broke even around clearance and were able to hit the scoreboard. We registered 2 goals to St Bedes 3 to trial at quarter time. Our second quarter was frustrating. We failed to make the most of the win advantage in the quarter. To the opposition credit, they saturated the contest and condense the game making it very difficult to generate any ball movement. It was a real scrappy, low scoring first half, and saw us behind by a goal at the major break.
We knew it was going to be a grind, and the third quarter was going to be critical to the outcome of the game. We held strong for the first 15 minutes, before some costly free kicks in our defensive 50 and some poor aerial work in front of goal cost us dearly as we conceded 5 goals to 1 in the quarter. At the final change we flipped some changes and tried to open up the game. We managed to open up stoppage which gave us clearance advantage and we were able to generate plenty of inside 50’s. We were looking dangerous and had the last quarter played predominantly in our half. We managed to kick 4 goals, but again like previous games, we squandered some gettable chances in front of goal, which saw us go down by 2 goals.
A disappointing loss for our club on an important day. Positives to come out of it was the debut performances of Algeri and Bedford who both played really well in a contested, hostile game. We will regroup and reset as we prepare for a huge clash with Old Haileybury at home next week.
