Under 16 Girls – Round 2

On Sunday our girls headed out to Eric Sutton Oval to take on Rosewater.

School holidays, sickness, injury’s and a time clash with our Under 14 Girls team saw an undermanned side go into the first quarter a player down on the opposition in spite of this the girls fired from the first bounce and within a couple of minutes had opened up a 2 goal lead.

Unfortunately by half way thru the first quarter Amelia Calvert and Grace Hurley where out of the game thru injury, both had been playing well with Amelia providing a strong focal point up forward and Grace winning a number of 1 on 1 and 2 on 1 contests across half back and providing plenty of rebound.
The loss of Grace and Amelia left the team 3 players down but by quarter time the girls had managed extended the lead to 32 points.

No one would have criticized the girls if they had lost the game from here given the circumstances, but this is a group that have a strong bond and they pride themselves on playing BRAVE football in all situations, not just when things are going their way, so they reset themselves looked each other in the eyes and said they were going to take this game one contest at a time.

In a game you can generally highlight a few 1% (sacrificial acts) that really stand out but over the next 3 quarters we saw outstanding individual and group efforts over and over again by every member of the team.
Our back line where remarkable in their ability to stifle the opposition attacks through spoiling, tackling, shepherding and so many strong contested marks, then being brave enough to provide an option when taking the ball out of defence.
The midfield played the whole 3 quarters unchanged. Running hard both ways and helping out the defence, transitioning the ball to the forwards and then locking it in our forward 50.
When you are 3 players down it means your forwards are outnumbered 2 to 1 but they were incredible competing 2on1, 3on1 and even 4on1 at some contests, to force a ball up and give our midfield time to get there.

This season the girls have been working hard on safe tackling techniques, ruck set ups, playing on, creating run from behind, defensive structures but above all being self-reliant and driving their own performance and it really paying off, with the opposition despite have 3 extra players on the field and the ability to rotate there players, they were unable to penetrate the whole of team defensive action and for the final 3 quarters only managed 3.1 to our 2.3 leading to an amazing victory by 23 points.

We are very proud of this group and how the players take responsibility for and drive the team’s performance.

BAD Teams – NO ONE Leads
AVERAGE Teams – COACHES Lead
GREAT Teams – PLAYERS Lead

Cheers

Paul Modra