2009 R15 - Club XVIII v Marcellin
5 August 2009
ac⋅count⋅a⋅bil⋅i⋅ty
-noun
- responsibility to someone or for some activity.
- The state of being accountable, liable, or answerable.
- Something Uni blacks showed none of against Marcellin.
With as much Hype as the St. Kilda-Geelong game, the top of the table clash against Marcellin didn’t really live up to expectations. With both sides looking to stamp their authority going into the first week of the finals, only one team actually turned up to play.
When asked in the press conference post game if Marcellin were a 10 goal better side, Merls replied simply “No.” So what happed during that 80 minutes of football that resulted in a one sideed score line?? Well where do we begin….
Laughing, joking discussing last night’s activities for 20 minutes, we may have not been in the right state of mind for such an important game. In fact we weren’t even at the right ground! Away we drove from the lush grassed covered ovals, across the road and out the back of salvation to an area that more resembled a Mumbai rubbish tip than a ground used by a supposed top private school. Rolled mud was the order of the day, and the question was asked over and over again “Is this for real? Is this really the ground?”.
With a warm-up that could have been mistaken for a 1920’s silent movie there was an eerie feeling growing amongst the players…..was anyone here to play?
From the first bounce we were under siege gaining little possession in the opening quarter and when we did they seem to have 2-3 loose men dropping back to take an easy mark every time. Woody was standing tall in the backline trying to stop their long kicks into the 50 with support of the Hollywood look-alike Willo. Just on that, congrats to Willo being voted in the Herald Sun’s readers survey as the ‘Sexiest Man in VAFA Club 18 Competition’.
The second quarter was much of the same with Marcellin so confident one of their back line players didn’t even bother to man up at centre bounces. We were starved of the ball and had trouble getting it over our half forward line. The engine room of the clubbies was again dominating under the packs with the ever reliable Swifty and Boogs working hard but there weren’t many others around there to help.
Overall umpiring or lack there of, was another down point of the game, with one umpire quoted as saying “It doesn’t really matter, it’s club 18, go cry to your mothers” when asked why Marcellin were allowed to run over the mark by a couple of meters when we were having a shot for gaol. The other stood in the road at CHF and blocked our leads but had the nerve to continually yell out to watch where we were leading as we were running near him.
If this was our worst game for the year but it did however produce one of the standout performances for the year. The halftime speech by Merls was one for the archives and will be played in the highlight packages for years to come. With some comparing it to the great Teddy Whitten’s speech, Merls displayed passion, inspiration and the true blacks spirit when trying to lift the boys. He did outline our un-accountability which resulted in the benching of many backline players.
Did we respond?…….we did play better but certainly not good enough. Dunn was a lone shinning light up forward finishing with 4 for the day. Shifty, Boogs & Smith continued to work hard in the middle along with Aggs showing glimpsers of his normal well polished game after 2 weeks in Fiji.
Overall we played poorly and deserved to be beaten. How we respond will be the true test of character this weekend. We certainly played our worst game for the year and it’s now out of our system. They played at their absolute best so we know where we have to be. Interesting to note they did run out of legs with 10 minutes to go…… the finals games are at least 20 mins longer than normal games.
If your still in the Herald Sun Dream Team comp Kevin Sheedy has a big tip for you this week – “Trade for Ty Menzies, he is under valued after an injury plagued season but is back fit and ready show why he has played A grade football. You can’t just go down to the shop and buy a bottle of ‘experience’ ”. Solid advice Kevin…solid.
Blacks unite and when that first contest comes at 2.20pm on Sunday…….unleash hell.