The Dandenong Southern Stingrays recorded their fourth win in a row with a hard fought, come from behind 7 point victory over the Oakleigh Chargers at Warrawee Park Oakleigh in the Round 15 TAC Cup clash last Sunday. The ground was awash with water after heavy rain for most of Saturday night had the Warrawee Park surface saturated. Both teams played wet weather football very well, being strong at it and going in repeatedly hard an low and every possession was well earned.
The Stingrays started terribly with the Chargers bouncing out of the blocks and kicking the first four goals of the game and at the 15 minute mark of the first quarter the Chargers led 4-2-26 to the Stingrays 0-0-0. Gradually the Stingrays worked their way back into the game, firstly by closing the game down through the midfield then opened up the forwardline to create some scoring opportunities. Shane Savage on the Wing, Ricky Ferraro and Riley Heddles as inside on-ballers and Aaron Purves across half forward were the better performed Stingrays players and led the way getting the Stingrays back into the game.
The second and third quarters was where the Stingrays played their best football, keeping the Chargers to two goals whilst kicking six goals to close to within 8 points at half time and to lead by the same margin at the last break. All six goals came from 3 players with Purves as a forward, Heddles on ball and the move of defender Steve Gaertner forward at half time all kicking two goals in this period. Defenders Paul Rogasch and Tom Gillies were solid across the backline repeatedly rebounding the very wet ball whilst keeping the extremely dangerous Chargers key forwards quiet.
The final quarter was an arm wrestle from bounce to bell with both teams giving their all. The Stingrays skipped out to a 17 point lead only to have the Chargers close in with two goals but never got closer than the final margin of 7 points. The Stingrays will be well served with Michael Hibberd and Matt Clark returning from injury and Ashley Smith, Tom Scully, Corey Millard and Alex Goodingham back from school football all being better for the run and setting themselves up for the remainder of the season.
Next weekend the Stingrays have a home game at Casey Fields against their local rivals, the Gippsland Power on Sunday at 1.00pm.
Congratulations to John McCarthy from last years Stingrays TAC Cup squad who made his AFL debut on Saturday night with Collingwood in their win over St. Kilda. McCarthy was selected by Collingwood with their second round pick at 31 overall in the 2007 National draft and has been in good form in the VFL with Collingwood’s VFL team.
Last Modified on 11/08/2008 20:39