TWO young teams took to the park to represent St Arnaud and Donald in their first round fixtures and came away with mixed results.
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Sea Lake-Nandaly v St Arnaud
ST ARNAUD made the long trip to Sea Lake for the opening round of the season but its senior side could not manage consistent enough football to come away with the win.
The final scoreboard saw Sea Lake-Nandaly Tigers run out 23.12 (150) to 14.11 (95) winners.
St Arnaud coach Jason DeGraaf said he had to expect his young side would put in incosistent performances.
“It’s just going to happen when half your team is under the age of 21 or 22,” he said.
“The same things were happening in our practice matches and its not just our young players because our senior players will need to step up to help them.”
The side was in the contest for the first half and came back from 31-points down at quarter-time to lead by a point at half-time.
A nine goal to one third quarter all but sealed the win for Tigers.
“We were just overwhelmed by bigger bodies,” DeGraaf said.
“They were a lot bigger and a lot more experienced than us. In the second quarter we played the game to our strengths when we ran the ball and applied pressure but we could not keep it up.”
DeGraff said the St Aranud backline did well and it could have been a lot worse for his side otherwise.
“This is only the first game of the season and the positive is that when we click we play really good football,” he said.
“If we don’t we will be up against it, but we were under no illusion it was going to be an unbeaten season.”
Boort v Donald
DONALD started its season off in winning form by controlling its game against Boort from start to finish.
After holding Boort scoreless in the opening the quarter the Royal Blues went on to win 10.12 (72) to 4.9 (33).
Most of the damage was done in the first quarter, and Donald led by 35-points at quarter-time.
Boort fought back to narrow the margin to 21-points by the end of first half but never really got back into the match.
Donald held them at arms length during the match aided by some inaccuracy on Boort’s part in front of goals.
Nathan Withero was named Donald’s best player while Bryan Beckham was also a solid contributor with two goals. Daniel Harrison’s three goals in a low scoring game were vital, as were Joshua Potter’s three.
