SENIORS
A rousing win to reclaim the Lasallian cup. Written off a few weeks ago as relegation certainties, this team has come a long way in a very short time. Like last week the heavy weather made this a tough, physical contest with our pressure, tackling and effort going up another notch.
We held a slender lead at half time but played a scintillating 3rd quarter to blow the game wide open. St Bedes are a quality side and to keep them to 3 goals was an excellent performance.
The defence again resolute led by Tom Humphrey who is enjoying an outstanding season. Oscar Persson had a great game in the ruck with fantastic contributions for some of our more senior players – Josh Oakley and Matt Moore in particular where ferocious in their desire to keep the ball locked in the forward arc. But the most pleasing was that every player made a contribution, something that was lacking in the early rounds.
Report
After a close encounter in the 1st half DLS completely dominated the game in the 2nd half scoring 9.4 to 1.6 in this half.
Strong defence led by Tom Humphrey ensured the St Bedes Mentone forwards earned every possession and frequently turned defence into attack!
DLS dominated the clearances as Oscar Persson continued his good ruck work with the solid performances of the “In & Unders” capitalising on his good work.
In light rain and with the ground in good condition good, centre wicket area excepted, the game opened with the intensity expected of these encounters. St Bedes had the better of the play and Hansen goaled after 5 minutes. Tom Humphrey, who took a superb contested mark at CHB, exerted influence early together with Jake Williams across half back.
DLS got on top and squandered several promising opportunities through misdirected passes. After Dan Close missed from near goal, Sam Williams snapped truly from the HFF.
Trailing by 2 points DLS commenced qtr 2 explosively when matt Moore goaled twice with less than 3 minutes played. The 1st from the pocket following a superb pass from Liam Wood and the 2nd after smart work by Jake Williams & David Lowe hit up Moore on the fast lead to CHF.
St Bedes hit back through Hansen’s 2nd at 5 minute mark. DLS were in full control with Oscar Persson giving the “In & Unders” an arm chair ride. Charlie Hayley after a superb contested mark missed, Dan Close freed in a tough contest missed. In all DLS goaled twice from its 10 shots this quarter. Could have been costly in low scoring contest.
I don’t know what the Inside 45 stats were but on the infrequent times St Bedes did get the ball in their half, the DLS defence just blanketed their opponents! They are playing as a complete unit now.
Leading by 8 points DLS, demolished the game as a contest after the initial stalemate, which lasted all of 7 minutes. Ed Clinch marked & goaled after great vision & pass from Tim Allan. Against the flow of play Tyquin goaled following a relayed free kick at the 8 minute mark. No one would have suspected that this was to be St Bedes last major for the game! Only a superb smother from Michael Stizza prevented St Bedes from securing a certain goal.
Josh Oakley marking at CHF, Dan Millwood from a pack snap, Sam Wiiliams on the end of a Matt Moore “pass” all goaled to seal the game nearing ¾ time. Josh Oakley got his 2nd, roving a Matt Moore boundary hit out, and Steve Hogan goaled after marking strongly at CHF to establish a crushing 36 point lead. He missed from a similar position shortly after.
Although St Bedes continued to exert pressure in close, DLS were totally dominant with Matt Fieldsend setting a fine example. His piercing pass to Josh Oakley for his 3rd was superb footy given the conditions. Liam Wood, taking notice of the AFL Tribunal’s sage advice, pirouetted out of a pack at CHF to goal brilliantly. Then perhaps the play of the day! Guess who! Tom Humphrey, won contested ball on HBF, ran, touched ball to ground twice, beat off 2 challenges and passed superbly to Tim Allan for DLS’s 12th and final match goal.
Coach Paul Satterley said after the game that it was a complete team effort with Leadership Group giving their all.
While sets of brothers are a common occurrence at De La, for the 1st time in its 60 year history we fielded 3 brothers in the senior team: Jake, Luke & Sam Williams. All were valuable contributors.
De La Salle 12.12.84
St Bedes 3.12.36
Goal Kickers: J. Oakley 3, M. Moore 2, S. Williams 2, E. Clinch , T. Allan , S. Hogan , D. Millwood , L. Wood
Best Players: T. Humphrey, O. Persson, S. Williams, J. Oakley, M. Fieldsend, M. Moore
RESERVES
After 3 weeks of heavy defeats we found another level today against what has been a well performing St Bedes Reserves team. Some good inclusions added some depth and experience and it showed on the scoreboard.
De La Salle 9.2.56
St Bedes 4.10.34
Goal Kickers: K. Grant 2, N. Fyfield , M. Allan , A. Forato , T. Parker , A. Kneebone , C. Athanassiou , M. Hogan
Best Players: A. Forato, L. Jarvis, T. Parker, J. Fisher, N. Fyfield, K. Grant
THIRDS
Unable to find 18 players this was always going to be a tough day, which got decidedly tougher when injuries occurred and fatigue took its toll. Well done on the lads that fronted today. They need some help if the 3s are to remain viable and if we can get a full team we will be more than competitive.
De La Salle 0.0.1
Old Scotch 19.24.138
Best Players: S. O'Donnell, M. Tehennepe, N. Hogan, S. Griffin, T. Leary, D. Conway
19 BLUES
Blues get off the mark for 2014 with a good win against St Bedes to make it a clean sweep today against the Mentone Lasallians.
The Blues were away at St.Bedes. Bedes have started the year slowly, with only one win, and our boys were full of confidence that they could take the game right up to them for their first win. The weather had been wet in the morning and when we arrived at their ground there was a problem straight away, the St.Bedes ground manager had failed to open the away rooms. The De La team were left outside until some keys could be delivered. This caused a long delay and the umpires agreed to delay the start of the game for half an hour.
1st quarter De La came out strongly and scored several early goals. In the middle Jake Pirovano was at his best, tackling and running the lines. Nic Halliday was strong in the ruck and Dave Commins with Aaron Hay were bursting clear to launch our attacks. Unfortunately we lost Aaron Wheatley for the day, when he came down heavily from a marking contest and hurt his back. For the quarter De La scored 4 goals to St.Bedes 2 and De La looked to have the momentum going their way.
2nd quarter saw a complete turn around in the game, with St.Bedes taking ascendency. St Bedes had 17 to 5 inside 50’s and their mid field was working extra hard to get the clearances. Our De La defence lead by Sef McGraw, Jack Gava and Jamie O’Sullivan were working overtime to hold out the home team. St.Bedes scored 4 goals to De La 1. At the break De La were trailing by 1 goal. The coach’s speech at half time highlighted a few home truths and put the onus back to the players to lift and not let the game slip away.
3rd quarter started with De La out of the blocks like a hurricane, with intense attack at the contest and fast ball movement into our forward half. De La scored 7 goals for the quarter, with many players chipping in for a goal or 2. Adrian Indovino and James Howard lead the way with a couple each and Matt Dumbleton was running hard through the mid field to also score. Again the back half were great with Hamish Ramsay and Dylan Cowan, (in for his first Blues game), keeping St.Bedes scoreless.
4th quarter started with St.Bedes pressing early and Joe Cox moved back to shore up defence. De La did not take a backward step and took up the challenge, with both teams scoring 3 goals apiece. In the end De La run out winners by 6 goals and it was great to see a big spread of goal kickers, with 9 individual players hitting the scoreboard.
Also an important note for all U19 Parents. We are hosting our annual Under 19 Parents and Family lunch this week, with all welcome to attend. The Golds play Oakleigh at 11.40 and the Blues play St. Bernard's at 2.00pm, so it's a great day to see your Son’s in action, while enjoying a nice meal and meeting many of the other Parents. The coaches will also have a quick chat to Parents during the day and you can ask them any questions you may have. Contact either Michael Hogan (0439 904 200) or Marty Kelliher (0419 337 877) or Barry Howard (0419 327 535) to confirm if you are coming along to help us with catering
De La Salle 15.4.94
St Bedes 9.9.63
Goal Kickers: Howard 3, Indovino 3, Dumbleton 3, Pirovano, Hay, Curtis, Vawser, Cox, Wright
Best Players : McGraw, Dumbleton, Pirovano, Indovino, Commins, Halliday
19 GOLDS
There is nothing worse than a 1 point loss, and yet there is nothing better than a 1 point win, for De La it was the former, and for our opponents it was the latter. But to make that bitter pill of a loss all the more harder to swallow - the loss occurred as Old Haileybury took the ball from 1 end of the ground to the other unchallenged to kick the match winning goal 10 seconds from the final bell.
When looking at the scoring patterns it was a game of 2 halves - De La kicked 4.4 to 5.6 in the 1st half and in the 2nd half we kicked 5.5 to 4.4, and in games when scoring is at such a premium it is those very small margins that make a difference. And this week that smallest of margin did.
There is no way to sugar coat a loss, but if there was honour in a loss there was at Princes Park when the young Golds fronted up to Old Haileybury. With a number of our better performers promoted into the Premier division team along with a couple of players either pulling out with illness, injured or playing injured we were nearly able to maintain our run, for all but the last 20 seconds of the match.
We started a little slowly, and in a game where goals would be at a premium due to neither side really having a marking forward it was imperative that players worked hard either finding free targets in the forward line or that they kicked running goals. Unfortunately we probably didn't do enough of either - we kicked the ball to players who were either in 50-50 situations or kicked it too high making it far too easy for defenders to either mark it or punch the ball away to safety, or when we did kick the all into the forward line it was to players standing still and as such it was far too easy to defend.
There were flashes and parts of the 1st half that we could be happy with, but probably just not enough as we allowed out opponents far too much space, far too much time and as such they were being made to look cleaner and more effective with the footy. When we tightened up and put our opponents under a lot more individual scrutiny we looked a better team and suddenly our opponents were the ones making sloppy mistakes.
The game seemed to transform in the 2nd half as we got a lot more purpose about our play with our on-ballers, half backs and half forwards pushing harder to help their team mates, placing much more pressure on their opponents and generally controlling the ball, yet scoring was still proving difficult and we probably should have enjoyed a much healthier lead and put the game to bed much earlier.
The coach was relatively phlegmatic about the loss post game and did point to some individual efforts with Hamish Wardlaw clearly our best despite having a semi-fitness test pre-game, along with Will Mackie having a better 2nd half, Jake McGaw and Tom Hyland having their best games for the club, Jack "sideshow bob" Handley, Liam Feather and Dave Marchese also playing much better. Dylan Kelly had a better game when shifted up forward and Brett Cranage was solid across the back half, so it was not all doom and gloom, it's just the nature of those type of results that hurts - there is no coming back and to be honest - it stinks!
We can moan and groan about dropped marks, who didn't have an opponent, who didn't hit a target, who didn't play to their full potential, blah, blah blah but in the end we lost a game we should not have lost, and we need to bounce back. The problem with costly losses such as this one is that anyone of probably 9 teams can make finals and given the evenness of the competition it now means we must regroup for next week as we face Oakleigh at 11.40 at Waverley Park in what is another huge test with both teams locked in the four with the loser sure to slip out and join a pack of teams fighting for spots in post season action.
For parents reading this - we are hosting our annual Under 19 parents lunch this week as the Golds play Oakleigh at 11.40 and the Blues play St. Bernard's at 2.00pm so it's a great way to see what makes our club tick and meet other parents along with the coaching and support team of the boys. The coaches will also have a quick chat to parents during the lunch so you can meet them and no doubt they are happy to answer any questions you may have (they are both good talkers and could probably talk for Australia if given the chance!). Contact either Michael Hogan (0439 904 200) or Marty Kelliher (0419 337 877) or Barry Howard (0419 327 535) so we can confirm numbers for the lunch.
De La Salle 9.9.63
Old Haileybury 9.10.64
Goal Kickers: J. Hanley 3, A. De Luca 3, T. Hyland , M. Laoumtzis , J. McGAW
Best Players: H. Wardlaw, B. Cranage, D. Marchese, A. De Luca, L. Feather, J. McGAW
Last Modified on 15/05/2014 11:29