Telstra Store West Lakes Reserves Match Report Round 13

Eagles 12.13 (85) def South Adelaide 8.4 (52)
Goal Scorers: Morgan 4, Pickett 2, Weidemann, Cook, Miller E, Redden X, Lewis, Schoenberg
Best Players: McNeil, Nason, Jungfer, West, Morgan, Schoenberg

The reserves team has come off a really disappointing month of football where the standards were not where they needed to be at for Reserves SANFL level. Our motivation going into this massive game for us was to ensure that we supported each other at the contest if we were to be able to turn around our form against South Adelaide at Noarlunga.

If one was to look at the scoreboard at quarter time they would have thought that the Eagle’s boys were not putting the effort on the board that is required. This couldn’t have been further from the truth although being down by 11 points I felt really comfortable about the start and the energy to the contest the men bought. We had 29 tackles for the quarter that resulted in 3 turnovers to us. This was clear that the men had come to play and support one another so the message was clear at quarter time to keep at it and things would turn our way.

What we saw in the second quarter was the best quarter of football put together by this team having 22 inside 50’s for 8 goals and 7 points. This came because of our willingness to play simple football and not over complicate it too much.

Half time although coming at the wrong time posed a real challenge to see how mature this team could be to deal with a 44 point lead. For the first 10 minutes we lacked that maturity but a great sign was that we were able to take control of the football and wrestle back some ascendancy for the back half of the quarter.

The final quarter was a real arm wrestle but we were able to control the tempo and get a valuable 2 points to set us up for the back end of the season.

Vinnie Rugolo
Reserves Coach