Firstly I would like to thank the NEMJFA - Annette, Shaun, Neville and Cheryl for their support and help in getting this trip up and organised.
The whole experience, from our first training session was fantastic.
It was a great experience throughout the entire 3 days, not only for us the coaches and officials, but also for the 24 selected players.
I would also like to thank my able assistants in John Curley - (Assistant Coach), Marcello Buccini - (Team Manager) and Aaron Lawn - (Selector, Runner) for their professional approach and support making this a great event to be involved in.
Lastly a big thank you to the Yarra Footy League for making the trip across the border enjoyable and well organised.
The association has a great work ethic and it truly showed out in the way we were treated and supported over the 3 days.
The game itself was played as a hard tough encounter and both teams showed these association games are played at a higher standard than our normal under 16 competition.
A good start, but wasted opportunities cost us a chance to be up with the Yarra League, and scoring 8 behinds before our first goal in the second quarter caused us to play catch-up football for the last 3 quarters.
Kicking with a slight breeze in the 2nd quarter, again we wasted a lot of entries to our forward line. Yarra Valley were superior with their possessions and were a lot more cleaner and direct than us.
By half time we probably had more play, but crucial errors let us down. In saying that though, our endeavour never stopped.
A good start to the 3rd quarter had us gaining a bit of confidence and the lads started to hit their targets. We got our running game flowing to kick the first 2 goals into the breeze. This gave us every chance to mount a come-back in the last quarter. Unfortunatelly after having most of the early possession in the first 10 minutes of the last quarter, once again, bad kicking and wasted entries into our forwards made the job of making a late charge that little bit harder.
Two late goals to the Yarra League in the last 5 minutes blew the margin out to a 5 goal loss. Overall, to have probably 60-70% of the play in the game showed we had our chances but skill errors at crucial times and bad goal kicking were our let down.
When we got our run on game going we looked really good and our hard tackling and endeavour was something the players should be proud of.
Well done to Tyrone Milera for his medal for best player and also to Max Joseph, Callum Flanagan, Harry Baker, Brodie Latham and Mitch Payne for their solid efforts through out the four quarters.
A great effort by all the lads, all showing they could handle the pace and standard of the Association format.
Thanks again for the chance to coach a great bunch of lads away to Melbourne, and also to the players for their excellent behaviour and the support they showed to us coaching staff.
Darren Bugg Coach