Round 4 West v Central

The team is up on the SANFL site, with an extended interchange bench named. Our facebook page says Alex Morgan will debut, so maybe Squire drops back or there's another out apart from Morrish that we don't yet know about.
Do we dare to dream? It'd be a mighty win.

I think Squire plays another Ressies game and Morgan to debut.
Sinderberry will play back.

I don't think we've gone a round yet this year where we haven't lost a player with injury.

A late change has been confirmed for tomorrow’s match, a big congratulations to Judd Hansen who will make his SANFL League debut. Coming up from the U18’s Judd has transitioned into the senior program wonderfully and we can’t wait to see him showcase his craftiness around goals and clean skills tomorrow
Lucas Meline who has had a great start to the year is a late out due to illness.

We must have the longest injury list in the comp. Any chance we could ever get some of them back?

frankly, i hate to lose but this result against the top unbeaten team is proof to me of the teams improvement under Adam.

We kicked 3 goals to 3 qtr time.
Can’t fault the effort again.
We played our best footy in the 4th quarter but it was too late.
We lost the inside 50 count 50 to 30.
Patton, Searle, Ryan and Delahunty were good players.
We have 20 players on the sidelines with injury.
That makes things pretty tough.

It’s worth recalling that only a few years ago Centrals and Westies were both down the bottom of the table fighting for the wooden spoon. But with a good coach, good management and some selective recruiting the Dogs are now sitting undefeated at the top of the table after 5 rounds. At least we have a good coach.
This was an arm wrestle of a game. Probably the difference was Centrals superior tackling their pressure and precision kicking. Whenever we turned the ball over, gave away a silly free or lacked discipline they pounced and made us pay. This is what good sides do. Take away these lapses and the game would have been a lot closer. It proves we are still learning and very much a work in progress.
Will Patton was our best player. 8 marks and plenty of run from the backline. Judd Hansen and Alex Morgan both proved they can play at this level. Searle and Ryan battled hard all day but it was pretty tough to get the ball out of the pack. We had a purple patch in the last Q and got to within 14 points. We had quite a few shots for goal but couldn’t make them count. But the way we ran the game out proved our fitness is pretty good.
The umpires let the game go which was frustrating at times but probably, on balance, a good thing.
Our rucks were disappointing considering this was considered a weak link for Centrals. Around the ground Corbett and Bramich took only 2 marks and 30 hit outs between them.
We are missing 8 players from our Round 1 group. You could field a pretty good team from our injury list! Ryan, Meline, Morrish, Gore, Park, Ellem, McCormick would all be first pick players.

I thought our skill level was way down yesterday, probably due to Central's extreme pressure. They strangled us around stoppages so that we very rarely got a clean ball to someone on the outside, which might partly explain our small number of inside 50 entries. Turnovers, clumsy tackles and ill discipline cost us, at least, the final margin of 20 points. And 4 easy shots at goal missed also hurt us.
But to be missing 7 or 8 first choice players (4 of them from defence) and run the top team so close is pretty impressive. Six goals down at 3/4 time, having only kicked 3 for the match, and then 17 minutes later we have two shots at goal to bring the margin to single figures gives us real hope, which you could hear coming from the supporters in the stand.
Our small forwards are again providing us with very little. McCormick will be a welcome addition this week. And I agree with B&R, the rucks were disappointing, this should have been an area of advantage for us.
Searle was a bull, Patton and Frost did lots of good work in defence and I thought Thackeray was a good contributor again. We will worry plenty of sides if we ever get near full strength.
Disappointing to note though that we kicked a total of 18 goals across all four men's grades yesterday. We need to be actively looking into why our junior results are so poor.