KMFC vs Wembley MFC at Nungarin Match Report from Coach Kanga: After about six months of negotiations and enough e-mails to smoke the NBN we finally met Perth side Wembley Vets in the Wheatbelt town of Nungarin. There’d been some eroding of our numbers in the week immediately preceding our departure and we knew Wembley were in the same boat (read; ‘Ocean Liner’… you should have seen the coach the nine of them rocked up in!) so there’d been correspondence with Nungarin and other Wheatbelt towns in an attempt to rustle up some more numbers. We also sent an advance party down on the Saturday night with Deano at the tiller of Deb’s Kluger in an attempt to recruit someone to run water. The lovely Christine at ‘the Railway’ in Southern Cross was keen but didn’t have transport and Paddy the Boilermaker sure wasn’t offering her a lift! We had better luck at Muckinbudin Pub when we bumped into an old girlfriend of Jimmy’s; she swooned at the thought of ‘young Jimmy Creedon’ in his gold ‘Kylie’ shorts but we’d have to have taken out all the seats out of the Kluger and left half the advance party on the side of the road with the esky to fit her in… that was never going to happen.. Luckily the Nungarin locals came to the rescue with a few players, some umpires and a bunch of kids to run water. The names of the Nungarin boys escape me for the moment so I’ll hereafter refer to them as ‘John Deere’ and ‘Massive Ferguson’… good fellas, but I’ve redefined a definition; a firm handshake is now a handshake that can crush a mill ball…. Apparently every other bloke I’ve met in my life is limp wristed? The facilities at Nungarin are second to none although the bloke who put the goal posts in wants to have a good hard look at himself (like the pilot after buggering up the approach to Kalgoorlie airport.. “This is the shortest runway I’ve ever seen, but f#@k me it’s wide!!”). Ominously, there were not one, but two ambulances on standby! Apparently my reputation had preceded me? To even up numbers we agreed to give the Wembley guys an extra bloke to make it 15 aside and the plan had been to swap that bloke around. Cobber did the righty for the first quarter and for reasons that will soon become obvious, decided to jump ship altogether. Starting lineup was something like this; FB: Johno, Muzza, Kanga HB: Toxic, Shawry, Soup Dog Campbell C: Bully HF: Sonny Ben Williams, Chappy, Nicko FF: Deano, Riggas Foll: Wang, Jet Li, Zane Johno continued a long tradition of manning up on Cobber, Kalgoorlie Master’s style; zealously maintaining the required 70 metre distance from him so the Wembley boys could spot him up all day; the hard man of Burracoppin continued to rack up touches and didn’t the couple he got from the lovely Evelyn iron out a few creases?? (Note to self… don’t wear trakkie daks to an award ceremony hosted by a Swedish backpacker) It doesn’t require a degree in rocket science to play full back, but Muzza managed to butcher it. At one stage I asked if he wanted to swap out with me, to which he replied “Nah, this is good, you don’t have to do anything”… true to his word, he then proceeded to do absolutely bugger-all! Muzza, unless you’re in the process of kicking out from Full Back after a behind is scored, you are allowed to venture out of the goal square… this living on the edge, devil-may-care behavior is actually encouraged, especially when the Full Forward goes on a lead. We probably overused the ball a bit in the first half and as a result didn’t fully capitalize on our possessions. We also coughed it up a bit more than we usually do and when we did it was with a short pass. Wembley compensated for having a few ring-ins by using the wind better and hitting longer targets and although new to the team, the Nungarin boys had all played before (some of them the day before…) and more then held their own. The result was that by half time the honours must have been about even. I reckon it must have been one of Bondy’s classmates who did the head count because by the main change I hadn’t had an opponent and we’d worked out the Wembley guys were playing one short… Luckily I’d arranged with Wally from Wembley to give him an extra player after half time to square the ledger… In what could prove to be this season’s coaching master stroke, I gave them Muzz… in the first three minutes of the third quarter we’d kicked three goals… Yep, they’d seen enough of Muzz not to put him near their backline so they put him in the guts… in truth it probably had more to do with skullduggery than coaching as such, but the two minutes after the call Riggas hit me lace out with a bullet, 30 out, directly in front so I’m claiming it! The really disturbing thing was that Muzz actually got a few touches after that… go figure?! Soup-dog Campbell hasn’t played a poor game all year and Sunday was no exception; he ran hard all day off a half back flank and was continually the link out of defence. Sonny Ben Williams kicked so many rainmakers that the Nungarin Shire has given him the keys to the city and the locals were buying him beers (and even drinking them for him) but there’s no escaping the fact that he keeps getting the pill so keep doing what you’re doing Ben! Joey Jet-Li was everywhere as usual, racking up possessions at will and causing plenty of damage. He gets so much of the ball you have to wonder if he played most of his footy as an only child growing up on a farm!? Deano spent the day lurking on a forward flank but I’m not sure he troubled the scorers at all. At one stage he had possession and was under the pump; Riggas called “one – two!”… Deano was always going to get it back… It was midway through the last and Riggas wasn’t going anywhere! Bully got plenty of it too, including one gift from a Wembley backman who gently palmed the ball into his path; in a move that marked the passing of the baton, the 2012 coach maintained the same spirit of giving by hand passing to the unmarked 2013 coach in the goal square and not even I could F%#@ that one up…. Nick spent the afternoon carrying Riggas and Toxic and having to hear all about it, although Riggas did stop abusing him just long enough to drill a beautiful long goal from the flank.. Chappy was brilliant and equally, the Wembley boys aren’t stupid; it didn’t take too long for them to work out he has the turning circle of the ‘Indian Pacific’ and if he’s got a full head of steam you want to be somewhere (anywhere) else but right in front of him.. At one stage it was like Moses parting the waters as both Kalgoorlie & Wembley players melted out of the way to let him through! One of the Wembley blokes reckons he gave him a high five as he went past; I’m not sure how that counts as a stat but it did epitomize the spirit the game was played in. Wang and big Zane shared the ruck duties against big Sean Delaney. It was good to catch up with Irish although he hasn’t got any smaller and I much prefer it when he’s on our side! Wang was Wang and along with Chappy, got the chocolates from the Wembley fellas for best players. I had Joey in the mix as well and Zano and Tim Campbell were also very good all day. In all, a cracking day of footy, played in great spirit and thoroughly enjoyed by all concerned. Very positive signs from Wembley for a repeat next year with the Nungarin boys also talking of rustling up a side. I’m also sure that if we’re scratching for numbers for the carnival in August a few of the Wembley fellas would be happy to join us. Quote of the day from Toxic; “I’m not going home without a goal!”… Umm, apparently you are…. Late press! Just kidding Deano, three goals and some cracking one-liners throughout the weekend… sadly, I can’t remember any of them?! And if Shawry starts talking about one of our forwards double fisting the ball away from the goal line? Not that I saw…
Posted on: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 09:54:00 +0000
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