The season so far, has been somewhat a roller coaster ride. A couple of fast climbs early with 2 great 1st up wins over Watsonia & Heidelberg West, before a flat track with a couple of sharp corners & a slow section with a Bye & the Easter long weekend. It then felt like forever until the next match when we returned to play Parkside! This was built up a possible Grand Final Preview & a great test to see where we were at as a team coming up against the previous year’s runners up? Everything started well as we shot away to a great start climbing the highest part of the track, before we reached the big dipper and down we went Injuries & cards struck us down & all the Pre season momentum we had gathered seemed to come to a grounding halt. It went from bad to worse over the next few weeks losing more key players with each game, eventually losing that game to Parkside then to Reservoir & South Morang all by about 4-5 goals. Another climb on the ride with a real grinding win against St Mary’s, whilst hanging on for dear life through the twists & turns, we now hopefully can return to the fun times on this ride as we have key players return & make sure that we continue this ride together as one.
Since the Heidelberg West Game we have had no less than 11 key players missing from the senior side & every week this list seems to continue to grow bigger, with another 3 out & only 1 returning. We are yet to finish a match with more than 1 fit player on the bench this season & most games we have had no one left to rotate any changes, it must be a curse as our pre season was a vast improvement on previous years, what else could it be? However, we expect most players back over the next couple of weeks which will improve our standing against many of the other sides that we're competing with.
THE GOOD: In saying this it has also been a blessing in disguise in that we have been able to reward 2’s players who have performed with senior selection & the 2’s team has continued to win even after losing most of their better players to the seniors each week. It’s also good to get any bad luck out of the way early in the season, rather than later in the season when it really matters & by weathering this storm & digging deep now, we will come out the other side stronger, more determined & better for it!
So after being 3-3 in the seniors & 6-0 in the reserves after playing everyone once, both teams are on track to reach our goals of playing finals & over the next couple of weeks when we start to regain a number of these key players from injury & suspension, we can look to improve our win-loss ratio to that is required to finish higher than we both did last season & focus on the long term end goal.
Last Modified on 04/10/2012 12:26