SANFLW Development League Match Report – R4 V Sturt

Round 4 saw us face the Double Blues at home on Sunday morning in perfect conditions.

We again rotated players through the team and brought in four players for their first game in Abby Brenton, Sarah Campbell, Amy Shapley and the young upcoming Chloe Tonkin as well as making numerous other changes.

The first quarter saw an even affair with us scoring first when the strong young Chloe Tonkin imposed herself in the forward line snapping an excellent goal. Sturt eventually responded with a late reply to go into the break 4 points ahead.

The 2^nd quarter was hard fought and whilst we were getting plenty of the ball we were unable to capitalise and turned the ball over repeatedly. Despite this we managed to keep Sturt scoreless and managed to score one goal late in the quarter when young Amy Shapley was on the end of some good team ball movement. We entered the main break leading by 4 points and feeling like we had worked very hard for little reward.

Our defence was holding firm led by Tiarna Harfield and Niamh Davis and our young players in Lucy Waye, Molly Petersen and Chloe Tonkin were working well together. Annie Brearly, Saraid Kustermann, Ella Maxwell, Nicole Hooper and Chelsea Frost were also performing well.

Our 3rd quarter again saw us play some good football with no reward and for 10 minutes no team could score. Sturt finally broke the game open and scored the next 3 goals in 7 minutes to lead by 15 points going into the final quarter.

We had the breeze in the last and made some positional changes to try to find a way to score and when Annie Brearly combined with Molly Petersen to score with 9 minutes to go we felt we were still a chance.

To Sturt’s credit they managed to hold on and then goal again to secure the win by 17 points.

As a playing group we were extremely disappointed with the result knowing we had won a significant amount of the ball throughout the game. On review we identified our fundamental skills by hand and foot let us down and the inability to hit a target when entering forward.

We will regroup and look to bounce back against the Eagles knowing we must win all of our last 3 games to have any chance of finishing in the top two of the development league.

Final scores:

West: 3.2 – 20 defeated by Sturt 5.7 – 37

Best players: Saraid Kustermann, Chloe Tonkin, Nicole Hooper, Chelsea Frost, Niamh Davis, Annie Brearly

Goal Kickers: Chloe Tonkin 1, Amy Shapley 1, Molly Petersen 1