SANFLW Round 6 Match Report

Round 6 saw a trip up north to take on Central District at X Convenience Oval. Coming off a Bye round, and our first game of the season without our AFLW girls meant there was opportunity for new faces to make their mark on our SANFLW team. We brought in Molly Petersen for her first SANFLW game of 2024. Emma Chapman made her club debut after coming across from North Adelaide and 16-year-old Lucy Waye made her SANFLW debut. We also got some experience back into the midfield with Hannah Button returning from an ankle injury.

Any trip out to Elizabeth is a challenging one, and this week was no exception. We wanted to test ourselves against last year’s Premiers and had plenty to prove after a tough result in Round 5. Centrals showed us why they were last year’s Premiers and made most of their home ground, with a lot of their score coming from beating us out the back of the contest.

Although we were challenged for all 4 quarters, we felt like at times we showed the true way we wanted to play our football. The growth will come in Round 7 to see if we can continue to play West Adelaide football for longer periods of time, and a smaller oval at Norwood will hopefully allow us to show our relentlessness in tight.

Hannah Button came back into the squad this weekend, and showed us how damaging she could be with 20 disposals and 11 tackles. Zoe Venning again was her usual consistent self with 19 possessions and 6 tackles. Captain, Madi Russell also had a great game in defense, winning majority of her 1-on-1 battles with Centrals in form forwards.

With close to half a team under the age of 18, we’ll continue to learn and grow together and we’ll look forward to another challenge of taking on Norwood at Cooper Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

We also want to take the time to congratulate the U16 South Australian team for their dominate performance over the last couple weekends, and a big congratulations to our own Emily Mableson who was awarded SA’s MVP for the Championships. We look forward to welcoming her back into our League team next weekend.

Thank you to all the families and supporters who travelled down to Elizabeth to support our girls.

Goals: Paige Allan, Nicole Hooper, Ella Maxwell (1)

Best Players: Hannah Button, Madison Russell, Tiana Fernandez, Nicole Hooper, Emma Kilpatrick

SANFLW Head Coach – Bruce Dawes