On the swimming pool that was Steel Blue Oval on Saturday, the club posted 3 hard fought wins to quickly get back on track after last weeks poor showing at the Showgrounds. The Colts secured the minor premiership and moved to 14 and 2 after shrugging off a committed Perth Demons who had won their past 7 from memory. It wasn’t easy however, and only a dominant last quarter put them away. At the final break the boys only led by 12 pts but 4.5 to 1.0 for the quarter resulted in a seemingly comfortable 35pt victory. Coops had a lot of players who made fantastic contributions over 4 quarters and none were better than Alby Dean who’s 39 disposals and 7 tackles resulted in a best afield performance. He was ably assisted through the midfield by Lindsay Murray who spread to space all day and used the ball brilliantly. His 24 disposals and 2 goals were very important. Chaddy Daniels had a solid day up front with 3 goals and in defence Kevin Pickett from Bunbury was superb. His ball handling in the conditions was sublime and he has a very bright future. Benny Whitsed bounced back to his best ball winning form with 28 disposals also. I was really impressed with a number of players who have battled hard all year and are starting to get their opportunity. Jarrod Shorter and Mitchell Smoothy combined brilliantly all day to form a strong defence with young Mitch especially doing a wonderful negating job on arguably Perths best forward. Will Riley is another young player showing great composure and Johnny Shaw continues to provide energy in the front half. All in all a great performance and heaps of improvement is seen every week from our young Ducks. The reserves was an arm wrestle in the most atrocious of weather! When the heavens opened, Steel Blue turned into a swimming pool and it was the worst conditions I’ve seen at a WAFL venue for a long time. But the boys battled hard and did a wonderful job in the last quarter to withstand a strong fightback given they had lost 2 key players. To top it off Perth were also kicking with a howling breeze. Rudy Riddoch had a fine day with 22 disposals and at times handled the ball like it was dry. Ethan Hughes continued his good form down back with a silky display and Davey McKay racked up another 24 hard fought disposals through the middle. Jason Daniels and Tony Stephens accumulated 24 and 22 disposals respectively to push their claims for senior selection and Tommy Smirk with 7 tackles provided great strength alongside our great reserves leader in Jai Menegola. Jesse Manton slipped back into the reserves this week and quickly rediscovered his natural ball winning ability with 25 disposals and 7 tackles. Our wet weather specialist Brayden Duckworth bagged another 4 snaggers as he provided a big target all day. He did the same against Souths a few weeks back where he kicked another bag of 4 in very similar conditions. Most forwards don’t like the wet but not Ducky by the looks of it, and he did a wonderful job to kick 4 of our 5 goals for the day! So it was 7pts to the good when the final siren sounded and the boys would be pretty sore after that one because it was a bruising encounter. We unfortunately lost Jakey Nuich to a pretty serious back injury which is concerning and hopefully when the scans come back he’ll be ok! Must have ran over a black cat this kid with glandular fever, removed tonsils and a couple of nasty back injuries really holding him back at one stage or another this season. He’s a very good player and we’ll see him play some League footy in the near future when he gets well! The league game showcased all of the boys fighting qualities as they produced their 5th stunning come from behind victory of the year. Now there’s no doubt we played really poorly for 3 quarters and the Demons played fantastic contested footy, but our last quarter was unbelievable. We trailed by 37 just before 3qt and 31 at the last break. Lucky for us the rain subsided and the sun came out for a period which dried things up just a touch, and gave us the opportunity to be really aggressive with our ball movement. As has so often been the case with this group this year, they didn’t look done at the last change and we just wanted to have a crack and see where it took us. Having a crack involved our defenders being ultra attacking and playing in front of their men and also having the mentality to play on at all costs. The other thing we spoke about was never moving the ball down the grandstand wing given it was under 3 inches of mud by that stage, and also trying at all times to go through the corridor or on the much drier scoreboard side. At the 4 minute mark Howy produced a moment of magic by meeting a ground ball at full pelt and stepping inside Chance Bateman and Clem Smith before working the ball deep inside 50. Rodge swooped on the ball and kicked a classy snap on the fly and it was back to 4 goals. 6 minutes in and Bokey forced a throw from Dene White in the tackle and he banged a long ball to Ricky Cary who drilled one from 55 to bring it back to 3 goals. At 8 minutes Faulky got his head ripped off in the middle and found big Tone who quickly played on, and a perfectly weighted pass from Connor hit Swoop on the chest and he calmly stroked through a set shot from the pocket and we really had momentum. 18 minutes into the quarter and Amesy came up the ground and forced a quick kick forward and Kirky Ugle put Jets into some space and he drilled a torp from 55 which went straight through, and it was back to less than a kick. We then battled to exit the Demons front half for 3 or 4 minutes and after a quick point, the ump nailed Blighty for being outside the square on the kick in. When Blighty politely suggested he may have been wrong(Blighty never swears), the ump drilled him again for abuse and Bateman kicked Perth’s only goal of the quarter and we were 7pts down with 5 minutes to play. From the bouncedown we forced the ball quickly forward for a point and from the kick in, Blight came and met the ball and surged it forward to Kirky who copped a high hit from the ruckman. Not sure where he got the energy from but he played on and sent it home from 55 and saluted the can bar! That made it all square with a few minutes remaining. It then became the Bluey show against his old club. Davo put a defender under pressure and Blue copped one late after marking the footy. The 50 took him to 20 meters out and he wobbled it home to give us the lead for the first time since the first goal of the game. A minute later and a high ball from Jukesy from the wing found Bluey and young Joel Kalajzic from Perth converging on it at top speed in opposite directions. Joel didn’t waver and neither did Bluey and it looked like someone was going to die! As the ball finally dropped they got to the ball at exactly the same time and it was one of those moments where you want to look away. They hit each other flat out, with Joel forced lower and flipping Bluey completely over in mid air. It was an amazing effort by both players and because both got up relatively unscathed, it was the highlight of the day. Bluey bounced straight up and went after the footy which further showcased his courage or his stupidity, I’m not sure which with Bluey sometimes!!! When Blighty drew a free kick and kicked it down the line the siren went and we won by 6pts. These players have not layed down all year and continue to amaze us at times with their resilience. Bluey, Jets, Uges, Howy, Amesy, Bokey, Faulky and Rick were all superb all day and Greaser and Joshy Kirkup came in as young pups and also did a wonderful job, as did Ando in the front half to make up our best. Theres still lots of work to do to find our best form because we were poor for 3 quarters on the weekend and have to find some consistency. That win secures a finals berth but we are pressing hard, trying to stay in touch with the Lions and the Royals who lie ahead of us. With 4 rounds to go we need all supporters behind us as we try to make a splash in the upcoming finals series.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:50:23 +0000
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