After a terrific opening game and win in Round 2 against UHS-VU the club was looking forward to recently promoted D4 premiers West Brunswick at home. The game didn’t exactly start as planned with the Magpies racing out of the blocks and controlling much of the first quarter. Luckily for us though they only managed to kick 2.7.19 for the quarter against our 1.1.7.
It was more of the same in the second quarter as we really struggled to contain the West Brunswick spread and run out of defence. They were really killing us on the counter attack and conversely we were really struggling to keep possession of the ball with our high risk use of the ball through the corridor leading to several costly turnovers. At half time we were down by only 20 points but the Magpies lead the scoring shots 16 to 6. There was much work to be done in the second half to turn the game around. Senior coach Russell Barnes made an impassioned plea at half time for several of his players to lift their work rate and to start hitting the scoreboard.
Unfortunately it wasn’t to be our day. After half time West Brunswick outscored us by 6.6 to 3.4 to run out winners by 40 points 10.18.78 to 5.8.38. Some late injuries to the Bloods certainly didn’t help our cause but they were by no means the major reason why we lost. Speaking to senior coach Russell Barnes after the game he said he was disappointed in the effort shown by the team and congratulated West Brunswick on their win. He also said we will be looking to bounce back this week with a couple of changes to the team.
Best players for the day once again were back line players consisting of skipper Lachy Barnes, Nick Morrison-Story, Matt Prouse and Steve Tibb while Ben Nucifora on debut also got in the best after kicking 3 of our 5 goals for the day.