U16’s Match Report – Round 5

On Saturday our Under 16’s travelled to Flinders University Stadium to play South Adelaide in our Round 5 fixture. We went into the round buoyant coming off a strong performance last week against Norwood. We knew that South Adelaide would be a significant test having only lost one game for the season so far.

In what was a bit of an arm wrestle in the first quarter with the game played between the two arcs for most of the quarter, we took a 9-point lead into the quarter time break, built upon some strong contested work and if it was not for inaccurate kicking in front of goal, we could have potentially been 4 goals up.

One of our key drivers or messages over the course of the season has been focusing on consistency of application and playing a full 23-minute quarter of football across 4 quarters. As has been the case our second quarters have been costly and once again for our lads looking back our second quarter was costly, with South kicking 4.4 to our 3 points going into the main break with a 16 point lead.

We came out after the break not switched on and allowed South to kick the first two goals and looked like they were going to run away within the contest. However, our boys showed resilience and stuck to the process kicking the last three goals for the quarter to only trail by 10 points at the final change.

Our last quarters have been reasonably good this year and this week was no different. We fought the match out strongly and made South have to earn everything and despite a last goal on the siren we went down by 16 points in a close contest. We did have our opportunities but Poor execution in front of goal proved costly.

While the result was not in our favour, our willingness to support and move the ball from our back 50 to our forward 50 was pleasing against strong opposition and provides a clear indication of the learning and understanding our squad is showing over the last few weeks, which is credit to them and the coaching staff.

This week will see significant changes to our Under 16’s side as the College Football Program commences. Next round we travel to X-Convenience Oval to take on Centrals and look forward to earning some respect back after they defeated us significantly in Round 3.

Best: D. Annese, A. Crispe, J. Moss, J. Mrozowski, C. Wildy, R McAulay

Goals: J. Moss, L. Keynes (2), C. Bradford, L. Andriani, A. Crispe (1)

U16’s Head Coach – Jeff Sochacki