Round 12: Macedon Vs Diggers Rest A Grade

What an amazing start to the first quarter taking a 9 to 0 in the early stages of the game. Diggers took a bit of time adjusting to the wet and we were there to mop up from their mistake. Our centre passes took a bit of work, as it was hard to break through the strong and physical pressure their defenders were putting on us. We moved the ball fast and patiently took as many passes as needed to make sure that we had a clean shot. Our goalers shot reasonably well converting 13 goals.

Our defensive end was clean and stayed in play only drawing 4 contacts. Recoveries came with hands over ball pressure and good quality umpiring. Janelle in GD, put in a solid quarter with 2 tips, 2 gains and 2 intercepts.

Diggers came back at us in the last 7 minutes scoring 7 from 9 attempts. The first quarter finished 13- 7.

We kept our line-up on the court, as there was no reason to make any changes. Our second quarter was not played with the same confidence as the first quarter. We turned over the ball with 5 bad passes, from 5 separate players and Ciara had 2 uncharacteristic held balls. We were being held up on our centre passes with a wall like defence and this was causing unsteady passes turnovers. Our attempts at goal was affected and we were kept to just the 8 goals with one miss.

Defenders were smashed by the change in umpire and were called for a total of 19 contacts. Our defenders didn’t stand a chance if we continued to play man on man tight defence. We struggled to stay in play giving Diggers a 2 on 1 opportunity in their goal third helping them convert 11 goals with 8 misses. Diggers shot the last 3 of the quarter bring them closer to us but we still had an edge with a 3 goal lead.

Lara took the court for her first game into GS and Alex took the familiar WD bib. We were back to making silly mistakes with a step, break and 5 bad passes. 7 turnovers are just too many for 15 minutes of play and something the team has to work hard on reducing. Chelsea dominated on our centre passes offering strong drives, and at times these drives were not read well with the centre pass, turning over the ball to Diggers. When the ball did make it to circle edge Chelsea delivered and  Lara positioned extremely well giving Ciara the space to take an easy shot. We were heading in the right direction until Chelsea came off with the blood rule and we failed to score after that. Diggers shot the next 5 goals.

Our defenders were back to being able to contest and the recoveries were back on our stat sheet. Our WA to GD deflected 7 balls between them. This slowed Diggers down which was great, giving us time to set up and come through for an intercept. Alex dominated with 3 clean intercepts while our back-line goal keeper took a gain, intercept and rebound. However, Diggers were serviced with a lot of ball, shooting more than us with 12 conversion from 18 attempts. Of the 5 misses they rebounded 4. Because of our performance in the last 5 minutes, the 3-quarter score was 30 all. If we were going to win this game we needed to put in a better effort for the last 15 minutes.

Fresh legs in the centre was needed and Karlee came on into centre and Chloe came back on in GS. We score off the first 3 centre passes giving us the breathing room we needed to push ahead. We minimised our mistakes to just the 2 turnovers for the quarter, our best for the game and our centre passes became much easier because the umpire started calling their defenders for holding. Chelsea continued to feed and assist with accuracy, while Karlee fed the ball with the same precision. Supply to our goalers was outstanding and we shot 13 goals from 18 attempts. Of the 5 misses we rebounded 3 of those back.

If we were going to win ball back in defence, we needed to adjust our style of defence to match the umpire. We tried to mix it up and this caused a little confusion for Diggers but we weren’t winning clean ball off this defence. Katie and Janelle were out of play 8 times which could have been costly but 3 clean recoveries and a rebound from Janelle, and 3 rebounds from Katie meant that being out of play was a chance worth taking. Diggers shot just the 7 goals with 5 misses and this all added up to a good 7 goal win for us.

We played a solid 1^st and 4^th quarter. Next week lets put 3 good quarters together

Quarter score break down