By Marcus Uhe
While Noble Park’s prospects of playing finals football in the Eastern Football Netball League Premier Division are over for season 2024, the Bulls appear hellbent on finishing the season with some momentum to take into 2025.
With just three games remaining in the home-and-away season, the Bulls trail sixth-placed South Croydon by 16 premiership points, and as a result find themselves too far back to climb into the top six by season’s end, making it consecutive years since winning the 2022 premiership that they have not featured in September action.
A thumping 109-point over Norwood in front of a bumper home crowd reminiscing on their 2004 premiership trump, however, gave their fans something to smile about in what has been an otherwise frustrating year for supporters of the blue and gold.
The Bulls slammed on their highest team score and inflicted their highest margin of victory in 2024, winning 22.13 145 to 5.6 36 over the bottom-placed Norwood, exacting revenge for a disappointing loss earlier in the campaign.
It was a ruthless display from the home side, which flexed its muscle with the final eight goals of the contest and kept the visitors goalless in the final term to rub salt into a bleeding wound.
The Bulls were slow out the gates, conceding the first two goals of the game, before finishing the quarter with the final seven to lead by five goals at the opening break.
A flurry of five goals between the 19th minute and 28th of the quarter broke the game apart, as the charging Bulls overwhelmed the defenseless visitors in devastating fashion.
A pair of set shots from Bailey Lambert began the run, before Jordan McDonnell, Liam O’Rourke and Daniel Knapper helped the margin inflate.
Three goals came directly from centre bounce clearances, as Tom Nelson, Liam McDonnell and Jackson Sketcher got busy in the middle of the ground.
Norwood stopped the rot in the second term and even bagged the first of the quarter, but another scoring burst in the middle of the quarter reinforced just whose terms the contest was being played on.
Goals to Sketcher, Matt Nelson and Lambert in the span of five minutes displayed the best of what Noble Park is capable of, with the latter pair coming on the back of slick ball movement from the back half.
By half time the margin had reached 46 points, and this was simply a game the Bulls were not going to let slip.
11 goals to one in the second half gave the home crowd plenty to cheer in what was comfortably their best performance of 2024.
Lambert finished with four majors, closely followed by Jackson McDonnell and Jordan Marson with three apiece.
Luke Bull, Scott McInerney, Jacob Noble and Harley Fairbank were all among Noble Park’s best in the thrashing, as opportunities arose in the midfield without established star-onballers Kyle Martin and Chris Horton-Milne.
In what was a day for major celebrations at the football club, the reserves side kicked 10 goals in the second, third and fourth quarter to record a 225-point win over Norwood’s earlier in the afternoon.
Holding the visitors to just a solitary point, the Bulls kicked 35.16 226, consolidating fifth place and receiving a major percentage boost in the process.
Young forward Jackson Vassallo kicked nine goals for the Bulls, news that will warm the hearts of Noble Park and local football supporters, as the son of three-time Bulls premiership player, Gavin.
Noble Park next faces Blackburn at the Panthers’ Morton Park, before finishing the season with a trip to Balwyn in round 17 and hosting Rowville in round 18.
