Fourth quarter blitz seals the win at Noarlunga

We headed down to Noarlunga for our round 5 clash with South Adelaide, which is traditionally a difficult place to win for all. While they have had a tough couple of weeks, they certainly have a strong, talented list, and we expected nothing less than needing to play at our best, or close to our best, football for long periods to be able to get a positive result. A strong full team effort allowed us to take the points in our fourth win in a row.

The first quarter was an even contest, with some end-to-end football played and both teams possibly not making the most of some scoring opportunities. We headed into quarter time reasonably happy to be just one point down, having played into a strong breeze. As we have been able to do for long periods over the last few weeks, the second quarter was played in our forward half for the majority. While happy to be 16 points up at half time, we definitely left some goals out there and certainly left ourselves with plenty of work in the second half.

This proved to be the case in the third quarter, with South Adelaide able to pin us in our defensive half for long periods. We will take some good learnings out of that period, in that we lost a little bit of composure with the ball and a little bit of structure, but the big positive is we were able to scramble well enough to maintain a five-point lead into the last quarter with the strong breeze in our favour.

Over the last few games, our last quarters have been strong. That was the case again, with some excellent ball movement and transition at times opening the game up, and a six goal to nothing last quarter allowed us to get away with a 41-point win. While the offensive side of the game was strong over the quarter, a four minute block in the mid part of the quarter was possibly the most pleasing part from a coaching group perspective. We had thirteen repeat stoppages in our defensive 50, where we were desperate and disciplined as a collective group not to give up a score before being able to get the ball into our forward half. We take away a lot from that four minute block. In the context of the season, we see this as an important win

Our Reserves group unfortunately were not able to continue their winning ways. A slow start to the game and finding themselves six goals down reasonably quickly meant it was an uphill battle for a large part of the day. To the credit of all, they were able to get themselves back into the game and a big chance to win in the last quarter, but it wasn’t to be. Like the League team, there are some great learnings to come out of the game and we will get to work on that over the course of this week.

Finally, congratulations to Matthew Allen for being awarded the John Schneebichler medal.

Round 6 will see us take on another strong club in North Adelaide at Stratarama Stadium this Saturday at 2.10pm. We look forward to seeing all our supporters there as we look to make it five wins in a row and set our season up well as we head into a bye the following weekend.

Goal kickers: Lachie Hosie (5), Matt Allen (2), James Bell (2), Luke Reynolds (2), Riley Holder, Billy Stretch

Best players: Matt Allen, Toby Pink, Lachie Hosie, Cam McGree, Brodie Newman