Burra forward Matthew Hammond gets a kick away under pressure from Devon Meadows’ Brett Armitage. By Brad Kingsbury
KEYSBOROUGH had to fight hard before overcoming a determined and spirited challenge from Devon Meadows in their round eight Casey Cardinia league match to bounce back to the winners’ list by 16 points at the Rowley Allen Reserve.
Coming off a 106-point hiding a fortnight ago, the visitors were without key recruit Aaron Henneman and fellow goal kicker Matt Davey, but steeled themselves against the highly rated Burra and kept at their task, pleasing coach Steve O’Brien.
“I was really happy with the way we responded to what happened the week before,” he said.
“The players put their bodies on the line and that was the best response I could ask for.”
After a competitive opening 15 minutes, Keysborough slipped away to a three-goal lead and managed to hold an edge on the scoreboard for the rest of the afternoon.
However, the Panthers continued to pressure the usually free-flowing Burra midfielders throughout the day and with youngsters including Stefan Baumgartner, Billy Hayes and Justin Corrigan providing drive out of the midfield.
While experienced Keysborough defender Corey Wilkinson blanketed Craig Hunter, the Panthers were able to create mobile scoring avenues through Scott Morrison and Scott Young, who each ended the day with three goals.
At the other end, Matthew Freeman was held to two goals by Brett Armitage, but Luke McGuinness, Daniel Morland, Brett Colbert and Clinton King all chipped in with multiple majors to keep the home side in the ascendancy.
O’Brien was happy with the way his players ran out the game, outscoring the Burra in the last quarter, and said afterwards that the game was another piece of the learning puzzle in place.
“We’ve been working on maintaining belief. We need to keep believing in ourselves and the plans we put in place,” he said.
“We did our homework and we knew that if we stuck to our plans we could match it with Keysy.”
O’Brien said the only negative to come out of the game was the umpiring.
“I can’t knock my side on that effort. We were more than competitive and the only disappointment for the day was the umpiring standard,” he said.
“I don’t normally comment on umpires but this was just shocking.”
Keysborough president Clay Cullen agreed with O’Brien’s assessment of the Panthers game, and said it was just good to get the win and move on.
“It’s easy for a club, when they’ve been beaten badly, to turn tail and not have a go, but Devon Meadows didn’t do that,” he said.
“They came out and had a red-hot go and good luck to them for that. But even so, I thought we played pretty poorly also.
“Every time we kicked away Devon Meadows came back and that’s a bad habit to get in to. We have to work hard on those lapses.”
In other round eight games, Doveton thrashed Berwick by 97 points, Beaconsfield beat Cranbourne by 16 points, Narre Warren poleaxed ROC by 145 points and Hampton Park had a battling 29-point result over Tooradin.
