WEST v Adelaide.

Hope the catering staff are ready for the 4000 crow supporters.
Do we have any injuries? Is Rankin playing for us?
Go Bloods.

The idea that Rankine would play in an U18 trial match (against our Reserves no less) rather than a League match, is utterly contemptuous and insane. They don't even have the usual pathetic argument of wanting to see how he goes against his peers, because he's not playing against his peers. It can therefore only be about the U18 team gelling, which is irrelevant to everyone except the people in charge of the U18 team.

.

West Adelaide has included a 2015 premiership player for his first Macca’s League game this year against Adelaide on Saturday.
Defender Errin Wasley-Black has been named at half-back after playing three games in the Reserves following a four-match suspension for striking at the SANFL Incident Review Panel.
The 23-year-old has been joined by wingman Murray Waite and defender Josh Ryan in the Bloods’ 23-man squad.
West coach Gavin Colville will consider using Waite’s speed considering he has lost pacy Izak Rankine to the McDonald’s SA Under-18 team.

F: B. Turner, Bates, Karpany
HF: Anderson, Middleton, Green
C: Batley, K. Stevens, Noble
HB: Wasley-Black, Burgess, Hill
B: Agostino, Wilson, Head

R: McPherson, Keough, Schiller
INT: Waite, J. Ryan, Porplyzia, L. Evans, Beech
IN: Waite, J. Ryan, Wasley-Black
OUT: Rankine (McDonald’s SA U18)
Under-18
Caruso, Dalgleish, Fazzalari, Haysman, Gutsche, Hay, Horstmann, Earl, Groom, Hannagan, Milde, Wooldridge, Stakic, Morelli, Newman, Nunan, Westley, Hocking, Tuckwell, Inglis, Kent, Sinderberry, Kennedy, Wulff.

Our Macca’s Family Friendly round kicks off this Saturday at 11:50am where our reserves will be taking on the state under 18 side in a trial game (not for premiership points). The idea of this game is to help prepare the state under 18’s for the National Championships and hence the AFL National Championship rules will apply. This includes:
4 x 25 minute quarters
50 metre penalty (25 metre in SANFL)
No last possession out of bounds rule
No 3rd up in ruck contest and ruckman must nominate
Each team must have no more than one Ruck to contest any bounce, throw up or boundary throw in
A field umpire shall award a free kick against a player where the player. Who is not a designated Ruck contests a throw up or boundary throw in.
Anti-density rule – as per SANFL Under 16/18s
Gibson Turner is unavailable for selection as he will be playing for the Central Australian Redtails. The Redtails are a representative football team who seek to achieve social engagement outcomes through providing health and education programs for Aboriginal footballers in the Red Centre. This was arranged as part of his transfer to West Adelaide.
We see Nick Favretto back for the first time this year after a foot operation during pre-season. To help in his bid to play for SA in the state team, Angus Rana from the under 18’s will play in the reserves this week. We also welcome Nigel Osborne to SANFL football after back surgery at the start of the year.

Another nice win



Won 4 of our past 5.

One loss was against Glenelg when we should have beaten them

Who would have thought that we would be 4 wins and 3 losses in game 7 after losing our first 2 games including that terrible thrashing at Prospect Oval. Well done to players and coaching staff for turning our season around. We have a couple of testing games in the next fortnight which should provide some indication of our finals prospects for the 2018 season.

Today we played a Crows Reserves side with 13 AFL listed players. They are bottom placed and were pretty ordinary but you can’t do much more than win by ten goals plus. Add to this we lost our ruckman in the first Q and were forced to ruck Middleton for the rest of the game with support from Burgess (!?) up against 202cm Reilly O’Brien.

This was, arguably, our best performance of the season and yet there is still room for improvement. Forward movement was excellent. Still a lot of ball handling errors but the attack on the body and ball was first class. Our fitness is not in question after finishing all over an AFL trained team in the last Q in semi darkness. There was only 3 goals in it late in the third Q but we banged on 8 in the last. As we’ve come to expect the umpiring always favours the AFL reserves team.


Easy to say ‘all played well’ but we had few passengers today. Middleton was magnificent for his ruck and ground work. 24 HOs and ten marks. How good is Chris Burgess? 7 marks, 9 kicks 5 goals. Not bad for someone who usually plays back but went forward when Middleton had to ruck. Keough, 11 tackles. Anderson in his best ever game with 17 kicks, 11 marks and 3.2 (should have had 5!) Stevens with his usual consistent effort. We are such a better team with Porps prowling the backline. Such skills.

Green looked proppy with a knee in the last Q. Macpherson copped a hit to the forehead in the first Q and didn’t return. Word is that our President has recruited a couple of handy midfielders from Albania.

It was a very good win today against the winless Adelaide.
To kick 20 goals in any game of footy is pleasing, it's something we haven't done for sometime.

Middleton was our best player today I thought his Ruck work and his marking were a feature, he basically rucked for the 3 1/2 quarters.
Burgess when moved forward was a dominant player. I would like him to play forward more often. He offers something different to our forward structure, he is quick on the lead and he has a great leap.
Anderson played his best league game winnining plenty of the ball both up Forward and also onball. Stevens is gun and was all class. Porps across the backline was brilliant and Keough is playing very consistent footy as a midfielder.

We play Sturt,Norwood and the Eagles in the next 3 weeks and these matches are going to show where we are as footy side.

Excellent result and some much needed percentage gained.
Middleton looks a better player in the ruck.
Sturt are a very good side and a huge test next week.
We might need an extra tall as Sturt play two ruckman who are very good...
Hopefully no trial games for the State U 18s and Rankine comes back 😉

Kicking goals right up to the final siren boosting our percentage was great to see

I have a couple of good midfield possibles from Albania and hace now moved on to Montenegro to find another ruckman before Lachlan gets annoyed with me.

Lee,

If you could sign an experience Ruckman that would be fantastic, however I do like the way Tyler McPherson is progressing.