Sturt outrun Tigers in season opener

After a strong preseason, we entered round 1 with some confidence in how our group had attacked everything we had asked of them, and we were feeling good about the direction we are taking and what it can look like as the season progresses.

We headed to Wigan Oval to take on a strong Sturt Football Club, knowing that they are one of the well credentialed teams in the 2023 SANFL season. Full credit to Sturt as they were far too strong for us over the four quarters and certainly deserved the win on the day.

While we are disappointed in the result, we are aware that it is the start of a long season. We will review the game strongly, look at the areas that continue to be areas of growth, and equally we will look at some areas we were good in. There were some things out of the game that we were happy with and give us some nice confidence into round 2 this weekend.

One of the big growth areas we are working towards as a club is our consistency to compete at a high level for longer periods. We are confident in what some of our good football looks like, we are also aware that some of our poor football is not good enough and our ability to limit those periods and find an in-between level is one of our important areas of improvement. That was evident on the weekend, where in parts of the game we were able to have it on our terms and play the game in our forward half. While we didn’t capitalise like we had hoped on the scoreboard, we are happy in how we were able to do this.

The good teams in this competition are efficient at capitalising from turnovers, and Sturt were very good in this area on Saturday. This is and has been a focus of ours and will continue to be in all our work as we look for the consistency we are after.

While the result wasn’t what we were after, we will take some positive out of the opportunities we had over the day to get ourselves or keep ourselves in with a chance. That is important in our growth as a club – with the strength of the competition means there will some days when it is a struggle and the ability to keep at it and stay in the contest will be important.

A really pleasing result for our Reserves team with a 1-point victory over last year’s Reserves premiers. While we didn’t play our best football over the day as mentioned above, we were able to keep ourselves in the contest and find a way to get a result in the end.

The great thing about football is we get the opportunity to get back into it quickly, as we prepare for games on Good Friday. Our Reserves kick off Friday morning at Hisense Stadium against West Adelaide, while our League team is back at Stratarama Stadium on Friday afternoon as part of a triple header with our Women’s team, which will be an outstanding day. We look forward to lots of Glenelg supporters coming along with lots of good stuff planned for all. We will be certainly ready to bring a four quarter effort against the Port Adelaide Football Club. I look forward to seeing everyone there.

– Darren Reeves, Senior Coach

Goal kickers: L. Reynolds (2), L. McBean, C. Lyons, C. McGree, B. Turner, L. Hosie

Best: D. Bailey, C. McGree, M. Snook, T. Pink, M. Allen