Leederville certainly was a good place to be for both sets of supporters, the games were great well two outta three ain't bad as Jim Steinman suggested.
The colts game which promised so much for me was a game that we set up with a 4 goal to zip first quarter (funny that it would reappear later to bite us in the rrr's) with a good attack on the ball and the ball carrier. Swans to their enormous credit came back in the second, the third was even but the last quarter we challenged the Swans boys and were able go away with the game. The skills on display were outstanding, yep there were mistakes, errant kicks but this was due to the pressure being brought to bear by both sides. If you are Swans person Metcalf, Chipper, Hannan and Humphries all showed that they players to watch and build a team around. The battle of the FF's was interesting with Amiss shading Taylor with 4 to three goals but it was great to see them in action. For EP it was a team effort and it showed that after last week we understood that NO side is an easy one. The usual suspects Dittmar, Druzianich, Littleton and Tunstill all had good or better games. For me Riley May and Peake had the sort of games that link the play, defend and just run all game. Great game by BOTH sides.
The reserves was a very one sided game and it would appear that wheels have gone back to the shed for our boys. I am not sure why but one thing that is obvious is that one or two players who were given a league game, rewarded with elevation to league squad as emergencies as a reward for their earlier good reserves form have decided oh well look what I have done and decided that is enough for me. One in particular who most would say is skilled and COULD be a good league player is just playing for himself and certainly not the team. Getting caught with the ball, running to far without looking how he was going to give the ball to an EP rather than what happened, silly stuff from a player who should be playing league - be team player and not selfish!
Well the league is easy to describe, pathetic first quarter, again, 2 quarters of breaking even, perhaps even winning one of the but 2.10 isn't going to win many games with a last quarter where Swans just showed that they have more players who are just a cut above what we had to offer.
I am really proud of the three quarters and that we were able to beat a very good team for long periods but the 1st stanza was just really hard to get over.
The ruck duel was great, Gault did the task all day without much of a chop out and whilst we won the numbers it did show that he is a vg player. I thought Jonesy did well, he took some good telling marks when required and used his body well, he just needs to build on this game and he will be the player we know he can be!
The swans group of Anderson, Cipro, Fisher and Beck are just irrepressible and we could not counter their collective influence. They allowed other players to either contribute to the teamwork or finish their work.
For me our best were clearly Taylor North, Jacob Msando, Dobbo, Lynch and Ameduri. Yes Simpson kicked 5 and provided a presence BUT he needs to do the same next week and the next and so on and then perhaps he is what we need. I also thought Merritt showed that Merritt.
We lost Willcocks to a shoulder and given up until this week he was our consistently best player one wonders what effect that had in the last quarter when we needed to be solid in the mid field.
As always if you were not there you missed a great day of wafl football with the better sides on the day winning the chocolates.
Great post Grump.
The SD Colts were totally outplayed by a more desperate and efficient EP imho, we have some work to do if we want to be playing finals footy especially with the PSA boys like Bazzo & Hewett missing for the next few months.
The Reserves played as well as they did in Rd1 when beating Claremont against a side who have been dominate at this level for the last couple of seasons, EP certainly have some big boys in your senior squad.
The League game we started as well as we did in Rd1 against Claremont maybe even better but for the next 2 and a half qtrs were completely outplayed by a more desperate committed EP who if they had of kicked straight could have put us away in the 3rd qtr until we extracted the proverbial digit from our backside inside the 10 minutes into the last qtr after Simpson (who killed us for the second year running) put EP in front. At least from a SD perspective we did fight back after being headed which hasnt happened to often in the last 5 or 6 years.
Very impressed with Msando & North down back who stopped many a SD foray forward, Simpson just dominates us every time we play EP whilst Jones when put into the ruck really dominated the game and showed the form that got him drafted a few years back to that schmozzle Fremantle.
