From Coach Crouch

One of my favorite quotes from my footballing journey is:

‘On paper, we look to have a competitive side….

But football is played on grass.

Your efforts control your destiny.’

I can remember many games when we were written off because of injuries or because of the talent in the other side. Some of those victories were the most memorable, but I can also remember the other side of things when we’ve gone into a game expecting to win and not getting the result. The challenge we had this week against Eastlake in Canberra was the latter. Due to a number of factors, Eastlake hadn’t had the start to the season that they would have liked, with the club winning just the one game. By contrast, we had only lost the one game back in round one and since then had played some really good football. On paper it certainly looked like it could be a one-sided affair, but when game day arrived we knew we had a match on our hands.  

What is great about our game is that you still have to turn up and play the game no matter what the situation is and I have to give full credit to the boys from Eastlake. They turned up with a 'nothing to lose' attitude, they brought a fantastic work effort and I have no doubt surprised our boys from the start. They spread harder than we did; they ran harder and backed themselves in. When we got our hands on the football they hunted us in numbers and applied great pressure. At quarter time we led by 10 points, but that was not a true reflection of the effort from both teams.

At half time we made some structural changes; but ultimately it didn’t matter who we put where or what structures we put in place as the match was all about work effort. We needed to become the hunters not just accept being hunted. We saw an improvement in the third quarter when a few more of the boys jumped on board. Eastlake had really taken it up to us for the first half without getting the full rewards on the scoreboard and the disappointment from that started to show physically on them in the second half. It also highlighted the uniqueness of the NEAFL competition, with our boys, who are full time professional athletes, expected to run out each and every game strongly, while the Eastlake boys have different expectations. The last quarter was when the match really opened up. After kicking just ten goals in the opening three quarters, we managed to kick 13 goals in the last. From our prospective it was good to finally see the team come together and play good football.

What the scoreboard unfortunately doesn’t show is how well Eastlake really took it up to us. We certainly didn’t deserve to win by over 100 points and our game can be very cruel at times.  I mentioned the uniqueness of our competition earlier, what we had was a lot more talent than our opposition and that’s what kept us in the game early. Coming back to the quote at the start of this column, what those words leave out is when there is a vast difference in talent. As an AFL club, we play at the highest level and as a result, we have a talented list. In saying that, we don’t want our boys in the reserves to win games based purely on talent. The result each week for us is secondary to our effort and work rate, which we hope can emulate that a senior AFL side. Hopefully the boys will learn from this game, and after the bye bring the effort and hard work that they had shown in earlier games. We are certainly going to need it as we take on the very talented and hard-working NT Thunder, who have only lost one game this season.

It was a dominant performance from Tommy on the weekend. Collecting a record amount of disposals, Tom was in everything. His work in close was very good and proved to be a danger when he travelled up forward, with Tommy having five shots on goal and slotting four of them.

Key Stats: 64 disposals, 28 kicks, 36 handballs, 14 marks, five tackles, four goals

Tim Membrey

Tim has been a consistent contributor over recent weeks. His defensive pressure in the forward line has improved and as a result he is having a greater impact during games. He is finishing well with his accurate kicking being a weapon, which saw him register four straight goals on the weekend.

Key Stats: 23 disposals, 16 kicks, seven handballs, nine marks, four goals

Dean Towers

Dean was once again the travelling emergency for the seniors on Friday night and had to fly to Canberra early Saturday morning for the game. To his credit he coped with this well and played a solid game against Eastlake. His defensive pressure was good with seven tackles and also had five shots on goal.

Key Stats: 16 disposals, seven tackles, three goals

Dan Robinson

Dan spent some time forward this week and was able to help the forward line with our structure. He had a hand in setting up numerous goals and managed to score one himself. When on ball, he showed a unique ability to read the ball from the ruckman and was regularly able to use the ball to the advantage of a team mate. 

Key Stats: 16 kicks, 19 handballs, 11 marks, one goal

Xavier Richards

Xavier defended well on Saturday. He had a slow start to the game where he was beaten in a couple of one-on-one contests but fought back well to nullify his opponent ensuring he had no further impact on the game.

Key Stats:  17 disposals, seven marks