Tigers hold off the Bloods

Hi all,

Apologies for not writing a report for the past two weeks, but I was quite ill with Covid and returned to work last Thursday.

With the weather conditions being quite wet and windy on Saturday, it was going to come down to who could most effectively control the best and adapt to the conditions. Although West haven’t had any success on the ladder this season, their past few games have been ultra competitive and we knew we were in for a tough contest.

We started the game well, with our first quarter being efficient as we had 22 inside 50 entries kicking with the wind. We were clean with the ball and used it well going forward, with Staggy kicking a couple of goals. We were on top in the midfield and we were getting our hands on the ball first.

We began the second quarter in the same way that we did the first. However, from about the 20 minute mark, West lifted and we took our foot off of the pedal so to speak, so we were outplayed for the last part of the quarter. We gave away a number of free kicks and turned the ball over which proved costly.

The third quarter was a really good tough contest considering the conditions and West continued to challenge us by capitalising on our turnovers. Max Proud was proving to be a strong pillar in defence, stopping many of West’s entries and setting up our play. Cole Gerloff was playing his best game for the club and applying plenty of pressure in the midfield and in the forward line. With West preparing to come home with a strong wind behind them, we were keen to start the last quarter well.

Luke Partington and Billy Stretch were instrumental in the last quarter, and for the first seven minutes we held the ball in our forward line but were unable to hit the scoreboard. After West managed to kick the first goal of the last quarter we were able to string together a few passages of play. This resulted in three goals for the quarter and allowed us to hold on to a narrow 5-point win.

Although we won, we made a number of errors throughout the game which we will address and review strongly leading into our next match against Sturt.

Thanks to all of our supporters who braved the wintery conditions on Saturday and we look forward to seeing an excellent crowd on the Queen’s Birthday holiday on Monday for our big game against the Double Blues.

– Brett Hand, Senior Coach