Bloods v Port Power Reserves

The first thing that struck you at Alberton today was that the Port Power Reserves are wearing the old prison-bar jumper that belonged to the now defunct Port Adelaide Magpies. Many of their supporters seem unaware that the team they now follow is a totally different entity to the one that played last year. They still are singing the same club song. Someone should tell them.

We seem to be gradually getting over our injury concerns and today at Alberton we had our best team – on paper at least – for the season to date. In came Hartlett, Green, Bricknell, Still and Tuck. Also, our secret weapon was back. Esteemed team manager Senor Harridino returns from the steaming jungles of Central America to catch his first game for the year. The stars were aligning. What could possibly go wrong?

It started with Chris Schmidt dropping out of the team and replaced by Silverlock. The PPR team then kicked 6 goals into the wind and kept us to a miserable 2.4 altho if Nelson had kicked straight from a set shot we would have been closer. Still’s goal from the boundary being the highlight. 1Q PPR 6.1, WA 2.4.

The 2ndQ saw us play our best footy with goals to Still (2), Beech and Stevens while keeping PPR to 2 goals and we went to the long break narrowly behind but with more scoring shots: PPR 8.3, WA 6.6.

The question was how much petrol we had expended in the 2Q against a team containing so many professional footballers? It was soon obvious that we were spent with PPR dominating the 3rd Q booting 7.1 to our 3 behinds. 3Q time PPR 15.5, WA 6.9. The game was effectively over.

Westies supporters started leaving early in the last Q after PPR booted 6 goals in the first 15 minutes but we did fight back with 5 goals in this Q to finish with our highest score of the year. Final score PPR 21.8, WA 11.10.

Best for Westies were Tuck, Milne, Beech, Bricknell, Stevens and Still for his 4 goals. 2 of these were from 50m out on the boundary. He took ten marks, is a genuine fwd and adds value to the side. Fielke tagged Kane Mitchell and restricted him to 22 touches including 11 marks and 2 goals. He did frustrate him though and there were several times they came to blows. Hartlett seemed to cramp in the 3Q but returned to the contest in the last. Middleton had a shocker and Fisher and Hayes will come under scrutiny at the selection table next week. Fisher for the way we wastes the ball and Hayes for his lack of pace. Special mention must be made of Stevens game, his best for the club and Schiller stood up well to the stronger AFL bodies.

Basically we were outclassed today by a team with superior fitness, strength and skill. They always had options available. They always hit the jumper. They switched play in true AFL style and were able to run into space while we were still thinking about what to do. We were smashed in ruck and the clearances but fought hard in general field play. Tuck played pretty much a lone hand in the packs.While the scoreboard told a different story we were far from disgraced and were a lot cleaner than last week. Perhaps we play better in daylight!

Random thoughts.

1. Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk.
2. Lost the hitouts and won the clearances. Stats had us with 4 hitouts to halftime. That's bullshit.
3. Got beaten by a hard running side.
4. Had some good passages of play where we looked good.
5. That bald umpire is crap.
6. Some midfielders run harder than others.
7. One guy had 4 tackles, Two guys had 3 tackles and 11 players had bloody 0 tackles. WTF.
8. Think that we need to kick longer rather than handball out of defense when we have the wind.
9. Good effort by the reserves today.
10. Will be good to play an SANFL team next week.    

Agree with all that, B & R and Second Team.

First of all, I hope our President was there to watch that.
He was all for the AFL to come in to the SANFL.
More money, more media exposure.....Well it counts for didley squat if the team cannot COMPETE!!!!!!!
I thought the guys battled hard all day, but it was clear that The Power are a class above.
Why is the Magpies song played after a win.........
They don't exist anymore!!!!!!!

It was weird playing against a 'professional' side. You got the feeling that it wasn't a level playing field by any means and certainly not a normal SANFL game.

The good point was that it's become easy to hate Port again and look forward to smashing them next time at City Mazda, but that depends on them getting injuries.

Also weird being on the boundary and seeing a host of AFL players being interchanged, most of who, are on more than the total West team.

Having said that, I thought we played some great footy for about two quarters, but suffered from several players having an interrupted pre-season. Bricknell, Fielke, Still and others added a lot, Stevens and Newell are coming along and Hartlett was good until of the field for a while.

I thougt the umpiring was almost perfect until 5 minutes before half-time, but the lost the plot after that and we again finished on the wrong side of a 13- 8 count, several costing gift goals.

We certainly need to find more steel when sides get a run on and we need more from our midfield. Schmidt would have been more than handy.

My feeling is that the comp is open this year and the opportunity is there. 0-4 is recoverable, but 0 - 5 possibly isn't, so we must win next week.

I'm pretty confident we will.

It's going to be pretty hard coming back from zip - 4, Norwood did it a few years ago so it's not impossible, usually you need to have about 12 wins to make the finals, we can't afford to drop too many more games as the season rolls on.

If we can knock of the doggies next week and then the cows reserves the following week, we might be back in the race..
We have to win those 2 games or it's all over red rover.