Saturday morning was our first chance to have a hit out on the haloed turf of Stradbroke Park and we were keen to impress the impending crowd which was beginning to build. Judging on the results of the first few rounds there seems to be a large gap between the top four and the bottom 4 and we were up against the boys from Beauy who appeared to be in the bottom group. So again there seemed to be a little bit of complacency creeping in to our mindsets and I sensed some of the lads thought of the game ahead as just another easy beat.
So with many of the boys from the 1s looking on, we stepped out proudly and began with a bang. Early on our ball movement was terrific and we were pumping it in to our forwards with immediate impact. Matty Vlahos put himself into contention for the inaugural ‘Army Award’ with a brilliant smother which he then picked up and snapped truly from the boundary. Similarly, the Big Don was plucking anything that came his way and was dead straight with his set shots in his first game for the year. Whether it was the Joe Rush’s threat of a 400m sprint for every point we kick in excess of goals we weren’t sure, but it was pleasing to see our goal accuracy improve immensely.
Up the other end of the park, Rogs & Dents were magical on the back flanks and nullified their opponents at the same time. It was also a good start for Meehan #1 at fullback who started to look like he was beginning to relish his newfound role. So at the quarter time break we were fairly content with the way we had been playing.
As we moved into the 2nd quarter, the heat certainly lifted. Whilst I commend our boys for not ‘starting’ any trouble, we had no shortage of blokes willing to fly the flag when Beauy decided to throw a few cheap shots. Though no one actually saw it happen, 2 goals were kicked at the same time as the 32 man brawl. What was disappointing was that the boys from the beach seemed to up their intensity following this whilst we looked a little bit suspect when bodies were needed to be put on the line.
At half time we were again disappointed, we have set the bar high for this season and we don’t care about the scoreboard as much as our style of footy. So whilst we were up by a reasonable margin we just weren’t anywhere near ferocious enough at the man and the football.
Unfortunately our second half did not improve a huge amount. Whilst we had some very good contributors, we just had far too many blokes having down days and our skill errors were absolutely killing us. The first quarter aside, we felt that as a team we were beaten on the day by Beaumaris and that was utterly disappointing. To put a blanket across the team would be unfair, as I felt we had probably 8 or so blokes that had superb games and probably won us the game off their own boots. But as previously mentioned, it was our next 16 that dropped right away.
As the final siren sounded, we as coaches did not need to say much and we sat in solitude as a group on the ground and delivered a few home truths. We could have easily been satisfied with a 40 odd point win, patting each other on the bums and saying how good we are, but this would have only been concealing the truth. The U19 2’s are the most unsuccessful team in the history of the Old Xavs – we are determined to put an end to this and the only way to do so is to hold the premiership flag proudly at the end of the year. With this mentality, near enough ain’t good enough and we have a huge week ahead as we prepare to take on a firing Geelong!