Sunday's performance by the Senior team reflects the power of appropriate attitude in preparing to compete at optimum level. It also exposes the less than satisfactory attitude going into our previous game against South. It is possible to have a great attitude in preparing for a game and still lose that game but I am quite confident that a poor attitude will rarely result in victory.

It was very pleasing to observe improvement in the areas that required improvement. The players worked hard on quick ball movement and effective forward entries during the week and significantly they were able to transfer this work into the game day performance. Forward and midfield pressure were other areas of significant improvement which made life easier for the defenders.

Congratulations to Chris Kane on making his debut. He has had a great preseason and he certainly didn't look out of place at senior level.

We now go into a week leading up to a bye. It is important that we manage the next fortnight well and come to Challenge Recruitment Oval on Sunday, April 20th with the appropriate attitude to tackle West Adelaide.

Mark Mickan

Senior Coach

Well not a great result for our first home game. I was really looking forward to the guys following on from last week, but the Eagles had other ideas. The Eagles played very well and didnt allow our run and quick movement of the football like we normally would. The guys where very competitive around the stoppages, but when the game opened up our defensive action and midfield pressure was not acceptable and we will be working hard on educating the young guys on accountable football over the next couple of weeks.

One positive is when we finally started to play our style in the last qu. we where able to kick 7 goals and close the gap to only 27 points, which obviously shows we have plenty to work with and the lads are made of the right character.

On a sour note one of our first year players out of the Under 19s / Southeast, Elliot King sustained a serious knee injury which is terrible for him and the club, but with the club , his family and all of his team mates behind him we will see him back next year on the track ready and fired up to continue his career. Good Luck Elliot and we will look forward to having you around the club this year.

Michael Godden

Reserves Coach

There have been a lot of  ‘sayings’ created over many many years of football to try and describe how things could or did go in our great game!

If you think of the saying “a week is a long time in footy” (which was thought up to say you things can change pretty quickly) and actually narrow that down to something like “there can be a long time between your next possession , your next effort” then that would describe our game against the Eagles.

To be specific – we started poorly …. A very slow and scrappy first quarter …..  then produced marvelous football throughout the second and first third of the third quarters … only to return to very substandard football from midway through the third quarter for the rest of the game.

This clearly shows that all of us have to be more focused ALL of the time. And that is nothing new …. As a person said soon after the game on Saturday … that is footy!

So we need to keep reminding ourselves and ENJOY the pressure of having to keep that focus 100% of the time  – because you sure showed when you put your minds to it you play great football.

Overall the way we played against a side that had greater height advantage and some slick midfielders was actually quite good. We most definitely applied body pressure very well and the discipline of spoiling, when required, was very good along with first gives and running (in the second quarter early third quarter period).

BUT – no one can be satisfied with being close to 8 goals up 10 minutes into the third quarter and then being two goals down with 4 minutes to go !! Our periods of poor play were dominated by very poor foot disposal and players not committing to team play.

After a most pleasing first up effort, we were certainly brought back to earth very quickly. At quarter time the Eagles had kicked 10 goals to our 0 and our natural competitiveness went missing. To the Eagles credit, they showed why they will be one of the top sides in this competition for the year – they worked extremely well for each other and were just more composed around the footy.

In the 2nd quarter we managed to lift our efforts around the ground and started to find the footy first and at half time we were able to regroup and set some goals for the reminder of the game. The 3rd quarter was fantastic as we outscored the Eagles by 7 goals to 1 and we managed to get ourselves back in the game and started playing some really attractive footy. Whilst the Eagles extended the lead in the last quarter, we kept on persisting and ran the game out quite well. Overall, a disappointing start to the game where we were outplayed, but most pleasing was the fact that we never gave in and we kept persisting to the end.

Craig Pitt was easily best afield for the 17’s – he ran just over 15kms for the game which demonstrated his ability and work rate. Sam Barnett kicked 6 goals from Full Forward and almost single-handedly kept the forward line structure alive and Seb Tape ran and rebounded exceptionally well from defence.

Ian Cox

U17s Coach