Macedon 47 WON 39 Western Rams
Another new combination this week that took a while to settle into. Chloe is officially finished for the season so there was a lot of pressure on the attacking third to work Shanae into the game. We forced a lot of ball and rushed to decide of who to pass to and this caused 7 bad passes in the first quarter. The ball wasn’t penetrating the goal third before the errors were made.
Ash drove well for the centre passes and using Shanae when she was on the run out of the ring. We struggled to make deep drives and were getting very clogged up at the transverse line. Feeds were good from Ash and Hayley, with Ciara doing most of the assisting. Shanae was solid in shooter, shooting 10 from 13 attempts and rebounding one missed shot. A great way to start the game in a less familiar position.
Our defence end did a decent job in the middle with 3 gains and then the circle defenders each took 2 intercepts. Rockbanks familiar shooter (Becca) was typically accurate shooting all of Rockbanks 11 goals with just the 2 misses, but Katie out muscled the goalers to take a strong rebound. A 4 goal run to finish the first quarter made sure that we were sitting level on 11 all heading into the second.
We lost the 2nd quarter 6 to 10 with very few scoring opportunities. We were reckless with the ball with 7 bad passes, 1 replay and 2 steps. 10 turnovers is too high and we need to address where the turnovers are coming from on the court. We only had 7 attempts at goal while Rockbank had 14 attempts. We are lucky that their accuracy became an issue or we would have had a big fight on our hand in the second half.
We were heavily penalised in the change of ends. We had 9 penalties from our mid court and 11 from our circle defenders. Katie couldn’t get the timing right or/and the umpire didn’t deem her contesting to be incident free with 7 contacts against her. Our recoveries came from deflections, gains and intercepts. Three from Hayley in WD, 1 from Bronte, 1 from Ciara and 5 from Katie. Our communication all over the court was flailing and we needed more from everyone on court defensively. We were down 17 – 21 heading into the break.
Although our 3rd quarter score line was pleasing, there were still a lot of mistakes to come out of this quarter, particularly in our attack. We did keep the injury time change with Alex staying in WA, Bronte playing C and Hayley stayed in WD but still managed 2 held balls, a step, 1 replay and 3 bad passes. Our ball handling volume was very high and the feeds and the assists were patient, waiting for the right movement or hold at the right time. Shanae positioned in front making her an easy target shooting all 20 of our goals this quarter with Ciara drawing the penalty and Shanae finishing off.
Our defenders came on with 100 effort and the results came through the number of gains we got. 9 spoils and 5 intercepts in 15 minutes gave us every opportunity needed to change the score line in our favour. Rockbank were deprived of ball and only put up 9 shots, converting 7. We had 3 , 3 goal runs and a 7 goal run to put us in the best position to take the 4 points, we just needed to finish it off. A 10 goal lead 37 -27
We cleaned right up and only threw 3 passes away and had one step. Valuing the ball maximised our opportunities to keep our lead. Alex and Bronte fed a lot of balls back and forth until the best goaling position was found. Shanae continued her great performance shooting 8 from 9 attempts and Ciara finally put up a few shots.
We contested hard but was put out of play quite a bit for obstruction. The umpire’s ability to move around to see the play hindered our ability to contest. We recovered 4 ball through intercepts with Katie being the only defender to get hands to an intercept. With the umpiring stopping us from defending Rockbank were able to get quite a few goals on the board. Regardless of this we took away the 4 points and a 9 goal win.