Aspley made a mockery of their lowly ninth placing
on the premiership table by playing some impressive football to flatten
the Western Magpies by 77 points in today’s Round 12 clash at Chelmer.
The Hornets won their fourth game of the season –
and their fourth straight against the Magpies – to move to within one
game of the top five.
While they face an uphill battle to reach September
action, they have a 2-2 record over the past month and showed plenty of
system in today’s 19.13 (127) to 7.8 (50) triumph.
The hallmark of their recent surge has been a
dominant defence and they restricted the Magpies to just four goals and
nine scoring shots in the opening three terms.
Tyson Hartwig was solid in the first half and
mighty in the second, skipper Robert Copeland was strong all day, Brent
Evans was quality for three quarters and then dominated at half-forward
in the last.
Matt Trewhella was solid in the opening term,
dominated the game from centre-half-forward in the second quarter when
the Hornets stung the home side with 7.0 to 1.4 to break the game open,
and then did some more handy work in the third term.
The forward line also functioned beautifully, with
James Nelis kicking four goals at full-forward and impressing with his
chasing and tackling, as well as long, straight kicking.
It was a terrific effort by the teenager, who played for the Australia Post Queensland Scorpions on Tuesday.
Matt Nickerson was busy in the first half with
three opportunistic goals, and Adam Hughes was lively with several
strong marks and three goals.
Hard-ball winner Reece Toye was again at the bottom
of every pack and high in the best player list again, while Jamie
Sheehan popped up all over the ground.
Dylan Reid always provided a physical contest
despite lowering his colours to Gerard Moore in the first half, and big
Declan Bevan showed some nice touches as the game wore on.
It was an impressive display considering prolific ballwinner Matt Shir was absent with a minor calf problem.
“After the NT game, which we thought we could win,
this was a big match for us,” said Hornets skipper Copeland. “We had to
get up. We were playing bottom team and we had to set a standard and
put them away.
“We set some goals before the match and pretty much they were 100 percent today, so it worked well.”
Copeland was delighted with the effort of the defensives unit again.
“We need the defensive pressure from the whole
ground, but if you’ve got an experience defence it can control and slow
the flow of goals down,” he said.
Magpies coach Jarrod Thorpe was disappointed that his team ‘didn’t come to play’.
“It was a frustrating day,” he said. “We were second to the ball most of the day, they showed a bit more endeavour.
“Our guys skill errors certainly cost us some easy goals.”
The Magpies gave ladder leaders Southport a real
fight over the last three quarters last week but their intensity just
wasn’t there today.
“It was a surprise but we’ve been up and
competitive for four weeks and when you have kids in the team, to keep
‘up’ over a series of weeks becomes difficult,” Thorpe said.
“This is the sort of let-up game we had to have, it’s just a pity it was in a game we thought we could win.
“From my point of view the most disappointing thing
was that we didn’t come to play. I don’t mind if we give it 110 percent
and come up short, but it’s really disappointing when you lose like we
did today.”
Thorpe admitted the prospect of breaking the long
losing streak at the club coupled with Mihalopoulos’ 200th game might
have impacted on his troops’ mindset.
“I’ve got no doubt we thought we could win and
maybe the guys played a bit more cautiously,” he said. “We were a bit
fumbly early.”
“We spoke about Mika’s 200th during the week and
the best way we could have rewarded him would have been with a win
today, but that wasn’t to be.”
The Magpies struggled to win enough midfield ball
with James Rozynski the only regular clearance-winner, and they had few
winners around the ground.
They were consistently outnumbered in attack and
Aspley still managed to create loose men forward on occasion in the
second half.
Greg Friis kicked two special snaps in the final
term to give the home crowd something to cheer about, but there was
precious little else.
“His (Rozynski’s) endeavour and intensity is
tremendous,” Thorpe said. “He’s been our best player for the last three
or four weeks.
“I thought Jy Spencer battled hard up forward against the odds and Conrad Hudghton again showed that he’s coming along nicely.
“Lachy Woods-Honour for his first game was pretty good - he’s a 17-year-old kid who’s in his first year of under 18s.”
Last Modified on 05/07/2010 10:45