Telstra Store West Lakes Round 14 Match Report League

Eagles 11.9 (75) def by Central District 15.8 (98)
Goal Scorers: Petrenko 2, Hayes J 2, Moore 2, Hayes N, Hall, Guilhaus, Poole, Mead
Best Players: Poole, Hayes J, Lonergan, Foote, Sinor

Sunday quickly become a challenging day with a pre game injury, a first quarter injury and a disappointing 2^nd half of football. The day started with James Boyd slipping in the indoor warm up 10 minutes prior to the bounce. This sent our medical team in to overdrive and some players could sense a level of disruption prior to the bounce with James being in medical hands. James was declared fit to play but carried a high level of soreness during the first half. Unfortunately James had a secondary injury just after half time which ended his day. Chris Hall injured his leg in the first quarter and was also finished for the day.

Early in the game both sides were focused on winning the contested ball. We had control of this and that assisted us taking the lead during the 1^st and 2^nd quarters. There were some early signs during the first half creeping into the game that I wasn’t comfortable with, even though we’d applied a number of goals.

After half time the 3^rd quarter was disappointing to watch, several opposition goals sailed through with little defensive pressure applied. This was something we’d not seen in our past 7 weeks of football. Centrals took back control of the contested ball which we know is there strength and set themselves up to win the game.

Early in the 4^th we looked like delivering another strong last quarter performance which has been a strength over the season winning 10 last quarters out of 14. Guilhaus started us off with a 45m set shot and Nick Moore followed up with a 2^nd quick goal to nearly level the score. After this point Centrals ran over us in the last quarter and collected the win.

This loss has been tough to swallow with every game being so vital to the group. The playing group has been in a space of pressure from very early in the season due to a challenging start to the year. Their maturity to absorb pressure and deliver under those circumstances over a large period of time shows fantastic signs of growth.

There’s been some valuable lessons learnt with this loss.

Angus Poole and Jack Hayes had terrific games and fought to the very end.

This week we play Sturt and are very focused to fix our mistakes from round 14. We’d love to have the support of our Eagles family this week at home.

Sam Lonergan
Head Coach