Round 13 Underage Reports

Another strong performance from our U18 Redlegs against South Adelaide at The Parade resulted in a 62-point win.

Despite the poor conditions, we were able to kick 20 goals for the game. Our pressure on the ball was very pleasing throughout and the ability to get first look through ruckman Alex Van Wyk enabled us to dominate clearances inside 50s.

In the wet conditions, our small forwards went to work at ground level as Rahui kicked four, Baldwin three, Hyde two, Laas two and Pratt two. Our tall forwards also worked their way into the game, led by Pitt with five marks and two goals, Sellen with two goals and Rachwal, Tape and Van Wyk all kicking one goal for the day.

Noah Hyde was our best player on the day, finishing with 28 disposals, two goals, five marks, five tackles and five clearances. He was helped by Josh Bradford who had 23 disposals and a massive nine clearances. Alex Van Wyk showed why he is leading the league in hit outs and one of the competition’s premier rucks, having 31 hit outs, 16 disposals, seven clearances and a goal.

Overall, it was an excellent display of team football as everyone played their role and competed hard for four quarters of Norwood football.

SCOREBOARD:

NORWOOD: 4.3 10.4 14.5 20.7 (127)

SOUTH ADELAIDE: 1.3 3.5 6.8 9.11 (65)

BEST: Hyde, Rahui, Van Wyk, Braford, Mead

GOALS: Rahui 4, Baldwin 3, Hyde 2, Laas 2, Pitt 2, Pratt 2, Sellen 2, Rachwal, Tape, Van Wyk

Well after two wins in a row our U/16 boys, we were looking forward to taking on the top of the table Panthers that when we met last time gave us a football lesson.

We won the toss and kicked with a reasonably strong breeze. To South’s credit, they jumped us early and kicked one within the first minute. You could tell South were close to full strength and ready to play. I felt after about 6-8 minutes we wrestled back the momentum but couldn’t get any scoreboard pressure due to us overusing it at times and lacking some composure going forward.

This group is learning very quickly about playing these good sides. These sides put you under pressure which led us to make unforced errors. Kicking a goal on the siren gave us some reward for getting back in the game after they kicked an early goal.

The second quarter was an arm wrestle for the first 10 minutes where we matched it with them, kicking two goals each. You could tell that South was trying to shake us off but couldn’t. South then kicked two amazing goals in difficult conditions which was the difference in this quarter.

The third quarter was a good even battle, in which we found ourselves down by three points at three-quarter time and you could tell the boys had some great belief after winning two in a row that we had a sniff of causing another upset,

The last quarter started, and our boys fought hard into the wind and at the 16-minute mark we found ourselves nine points up. This quarter the boys showed great character, unfortunately, South came at us hard. A couple of things that were out of our control changed the momentum of the game and South were too good in the end. This group has come so far, and we are now seeing the type of young men that are coming through our junior ranks.

Good Luck to Jeff Rozenbilds and Will Prescott who will be representing the SA U/15 state side next week. Our future looks good with at least 10 x U/15s playing U/16s this year.

SCOREBOARD:

NORWOOD: 1.4 3.4 7.5 9.6 (60)

SOUTH ADELAIDE: 1.3 5.5 7.8 10.14 (74)

BEST: J Polkinghorne. K Halfpenny, L Johnston, N Bowman, B Hogan

GOALS: J Polkinghorne 3, W Prescott 1, M Barilla 1, S Paris 1, H Lake 1, J Van Wyk 1