Old Melburnians U/19s 13.17.95 defeated St Kevins 6.6.42
This was the match the boys had been waiting for the whole year. After four weeks of comfortable wins and on the back of beating heavyweight Caulfield in the wet last week, OM’s ventured down to the dreaded ‘Rat Cage’ to play St Kevins. The rat cage analogy refers the Righetti oval being small with dust and bumps all around the ground. It did not disappoint to live up to it’s name as both teams were 4-0 going into the game with the boys keen and pumped for a big one. To add further drama to the occasion OM’s had a number of boys pull out right before the match which meant that this would be a tough contest for us to take home the bacon.
The first quarter we had the breeze and really wanted to capitalise. Kicking the first 2 goals had us on the front foot but St Kevins battled really hard and although OM’s had most of the play, St Kevins capitalised on the few forward entries kicking a few creative goals. We went into quarter time a goal up.
The second quarter was really important as we need to work extremely hard against the wind. Despite St Kevins having the handy breeze this quarter, we came out and played our best quarter of the year kicking 5 goals to St Kevins miserly 2 points taking a 6 goal lead into the break. Despite the wind, OM’s ran the ball really well and Vonnie was in everything taking several pack marks and working really hard. One cannot also forget the incredible goal by big Al that will have to go close to goal of the year so far and tops one from Hayes earlier on but only just.
We were pumped going into the break but we knew St Kevins would come out hard on their home turf with their large parochial crowd geeing them on. However, we knew if we could get the first couple of goals we could break the game open. St Kevins did come out harder in the third quarter but could not capitalise and with the Crazy man Maccioli moving up forward St Kevins found it hard to get it out of our forward line. While we were a little bit wasteful kicking 2 goals 9 behind for the quarter, we went into 3 quarter time 8 goals up and in control.
With one last quarter effort to go against the breeze, OM’s still couldn’t get complacent with their lead and knew they had to run the game out. We continued to toil hard in the middle winning clearances and by half way through the quarter the sting had gone out of the game. Highlight was Steele taking a few great pack marks and kicking a couple of goals to rub salt into the St Kevins wounds. To win by 53 points in a top 2 clash with a worthy opponent was a great result but we can still improve further with the view of playing four quarters of consistent footy.
Overall all players contributed to the result with Hatfield, Mara M, Carts, Vonnie, Big Al and Steele prominent all day.
The Analyst
