The Dandenong Southern Stingrays bounced back from a disappointing loss against ladder leader Murray Bushrangers to comprehensively smash the Sandringham Dragons by 70 points in the Round 18 TAC Cup clash at Shepley Oval Dandenong. This keeps the Stingrays in the top four of the TAC Cup ladder in the run up to the finals in two weeks.
The Stingrays had seven changes from last weeks team with a dose of the flu running through the club and a couple of strains and sprains ruling out other players. The players who were bought in included 5 Under 17 players and Mitch Hallahan who played only a week after turning 16 year of age. The effort by the whole side was fantastic with a strong attack on the ball and the opposition player with the ball a feature of the Stingrays play.
The football recruiting world was all in attendance as potential top ten picks, Jack Watts, Tyrone Vickery and Taylor Hunt from the Dragons all playing but as is the case in the game of football, it was the gun team that defeated the gun players. The Stingrays out ran, out worked and out played their more highly rated opposition and with a 54 point last term demolition completely crunched the Dragons. Matthew Clark returned to mid field dominance with a wonderful display of clean and precise ball handling combined with 1st class defensive efforts and 30+ possessions to be best afield but was ably assisted by the other small midfielders, Scott Sienkiewicz, Madison Andrews, Riley Heddles, Ashley Smith and Will Petropolous. Levi Casboult played a lone hand in the Ruck and was superb in his endeavors from the first bounce to the final siren to provide plenty of ball to his other mids. The Stingrays mid field applied tremendous pressure to the Dragons and caused many turnovers which resulted in forward 50m entries to the Stingrays.
The Backline led by Michael Hibberd, Tom Gillies and Steve Gaertner were all in good form against the Dragons taller forwards and James Hallahan, Ryan Bastinac and Ben Wragg all closed down the dangerous Dragons smalls and rebounded effectively from defence. The Stingrays forwards all provided many options with Aaron Purves and Myles Pitt presenting as taller targets and with the Stingrays having 12 individual goal kickers, it showed that the Stingrays have plenty of goal kicking chances.
Next weekend the Stingrays have a home game against the in form North Ballarat Rebels on Saturday at 2.00pm in a match that will decide second place on the TAC Cup ladder. A spot that the Stingrays would never had expected after a dismal 1-3 start to the year including losses to two of the bottom three sides in the TAC Cup.
Last Modified on 01/09/2008 20:58