Wheelchair Match Reports Round 3 and 4

Round 3 Coaches Report

Friday nights Round 3 for Norwood was always going to be a hard game. Playing the undefeated Sturt after they beat the Eagles by 48, that beat us in Round one by 42 points.

Sturt got out to an early lead and at times it was hard not to panic thinking that this could blow out early.

At the first break, we knew to take a deep breath, stick to our plan and keep the pressure on. Some early goals and we were slowly reducing the margin.

Credit is due to our mids and backs that we’re able to defend the strong goal scoring of Sturt and to send it forward to give our Forwards the opportunity to convert, which they did.

We knew winning this game may have been unrealistic but we wanted to focus on being within the margins of Sturt’s other winning games. To only lose by 10 points was nothing we could be upset about. I couldn’t have been prouder of how our team kept the pressure on and made it a tough task for Sturt. We now play Eagles on Sunday after a very short turnaround, another tough game where we want to square the ledger after the Round 1 loss to them.

Sturt: 15.4 – 98

Norwood: 14.4 – 88

Round 4 Coaches Report

After Friday’s narrow loss, we knew we had to work extremely hard if we were to reverse the results from the last encounter with the Eagles.

We had an early lead going into the first break and we knew the job wasn’t done. We knew the Eagles would try to adjust and come back hard, which they did. We led by five points at the main break and then only by 4 points heading into the last. We kept working hard and were able to get 3 goals to their 4 points in the last to come away with a 19 point win.

It was a gutsy win coming up against the side that had beat us by 40 points previously. To come away with this win was credited to the team for sticking to our process, withstanding the immense pressure and turning the game in the final quarter.

The standard of the games has increased so much already, we now play Centrals Friday night at Lightsview and look forward to this challenge.

SCOREBOARD:

Norwood: 10.4 – 64

Eagles: 6.9 – 45

Grant Leonard