The Dandenong Southern Stingrays have continued with their rollercoaster ride in the TAC Cup with a defeat, losing to the Geelong Falcons by 65 points in Bendigo on Saturday after a very dominate display the week before.
A lethargic Stingrays team were completely outplayed by a very well drilled and discipline team in the Falcons who dominating the opening term, leading by 13 points at the first break.
This trend continued in the second quarter with the Falcons lead growing to 25 points at half time, and from there the game was practically over.
In his half-time address, Stingrays coach Graeme Yeats employed his team to lift their work rate after their poor first half and pleaded for the forwards to catch something and stressed everyone needed to defend their area better and to stop the free flowing running.
In the third term, through poor conversion, the game was beyond doubt as the Stingrays couldn’t kick straight, with the last quarter all about challenging individuals to keep their spot in the team in the following round.
"We challenged them to be a little bit more team oriented instead of playing an individual game," Yeats said.
"I think there were a couple of positives in personnel- we’re really raped with Tom Lamb and Daniel Capiron who are underage players and top age player Zak Jones who in his 3 games has played consistent football."
He went on to say “I don’t think we can or could play any worse than what was produced today- we were pretty dysfunctional and had our pants pulled down by a better team.”
“The Oppo were very good and have set the benchmark for the competition, we now know where we need to be to compete with the better teams in the TAC Cup.”
In spite of the weighty defeat, Stingrays Talent Manager Mark Wheeler believed that the inexperienced group had learned some invaluable lessons from the game.
"If we learn to work together and harder, we will be in the game longer- you’re then a chance to do what we did against Eastern.” Wheeler said.
“The Falcons have always liked to play football on their terms, they like to be a very attacking side and instil a lot of belief in each other- we allowed that to happen today and to make it worse we missed too many opportunities in front of goal especially the
third quarter where we had a lot of the ball- 1 goal and 7 points, plus the way we let them exit was very disappointing."
The Stingrays have the chance to regroup next week, courtesy of a bye for 'Metro Round', before turning their attention to the match against the Western Jets at Burbank Oval, Williamstown on Sunday April 28
Last Modified on 18/04/2013 22:23