SANFLW Development League – Round 7

The final game of the Development league saw us face off against Norwood at their home ground in ideal conditions. We knew it would be a challenging game with Norwood’s development team performing strongly throughout the program.

We acknowledged this last round as our Anzac Day clash and talked about courage, selflessness, and sacrifice for each other and how we wanted to finish the season with no regrets.

Norwood brought a strong contested brand of football, and we largely matched them in this aspect of our game. They got away early in the game, scoring two goals in the first and one in the second with us unfortunately finding it difficult to finish our hard work up forward.

We entered half time down by 19 points but feeling like we were still in the game.

Niamh Davis, Milli Gentle and Phillipa Worthley were playing strongly in defence and Izzy Rawley, Sarah Campbell and Nicola Biagi were amongst our best, finding many possessions and working extremely hard across the ground.

The third quarter saw both sides lift their intensity and Paris Francis scored a goal to keep us in the game heading into the last quarter. Unfortunately, we lost our main ruck Abby Brenton with a knee injury and Maddie Fitzgerald again stepped up to fill the gap as she has all year playing forward, back and ruck when needed.

The last quarter was tough, strong football but again we were unable to convert despite controlling large periods of the play and eventually went down by 29 points.

This seemed to be a common theme for our development team throughout the year with us matching it with effort and controlling significant amounts of the game without the ability to finish our hard work in front of goal. Our season saw us finish fifth on the ladder with 3 wins and 4 loses.

We had an Anzac medal kindly organized and donated by Ken Duthie to our best player on the day. Niamh Davis won this with a courageous performance in defence.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the West Adelaide Football Club and the supporters, Haydn Ward Head of the Women’s program, Paul Streatfield, Bruce Dawes and all the coaches especially my assistant coaches in Allani Dawes and Dan Smith on their hard work and support throughout the program.

I’d especially like to thank the players for their amazing commitment to the program since October last year, for their genuine care and support and their passion and love for West Adelaide and the game as we will continue to support the league team on hopefully a successful 2024 season.

Final scores: West 1.4 – 10 defeated by Norwood 5.9 – 39

Best players: N. Davis, I. Rawley, N. Biagi, P. Worthley, M. Gentle, S. Campbell

Goal Kickers: P. Francis (1)

Michael Wakim – Development Coach