U16’s Match Report – Round 3 vs Glenelg

Easter Thursday football is a great way to kick off the holiday weekend and with a solid crowd in attendance we kicked off our match against the Tigers in excellent conditions. Playing night footy in front of a crowd is a great experience for the players and a test of their resolve to focus on the game at hand and not let the atmosphere dictate their next decision.

The match began well for us with some good clearance work and forwards presenting at the ball carrier giving us good opportunities going forward. Some execution and contest errors opened us up to scores the other way but ultimately we were pleased with the brand of football we had played in the first quarter, particularly early in the quarter.

We went into the 2^nd quarter with an understanding of what we needed to do to play the game on our terms and were challenged immediately with 2 quick centre clearances and scores to Glenelg and us being put on the back foot.

Glenelg began to assert their ruck and clearance dominance over us and we began playing the game between the arcs and in our back half. While our defence was resolute, poor decision making with ball in hand, particularly on our rebound 50’s, made it extremely difficult to find forward 50 entries and play any front half football ourselves.

We went into the half time break 33 points down but understood that we were defending reasonably well and perhaps could play the game on our terms if we took more time and care with the ball going forward.

To the player’s credit they played the way we had discussed at half time and while there were still some execution errors and we played a great deal of the quarter in our back half, we had managed to defend our turnover better and limit damage the other way. We entered the final break 32 points down and took some valuable lessons from the 3^rd term and our ability to shut the game down.

The final term was played much like the 2^nd, Glenelg were able to go forward from stoppage and in an attempt to score quickly we opened ourselves up to damaging turnovers coming out of our back half. For the most part we were happy with how we defended and when we did manage to penetrate our forward 50 we were happy with our ability to defend Glenelg’s exits.

We face Centrals this week knowing they will challenge us in the contest and around clearances which will be a great test of what we have taken out of our game against Glenelg and will look to build our maturity and execution with ball in hand over the coming weeks.

Scott Patching – U16’s Coach