By Justin Flynn
With one hand on a finals double chance, Newtown & Chilwell’s run into September has it well placed to be a contender once again.
The Eagles face improved sides St Albans and Grovedale in the next two weeks, but should account for both. Then a bye to freshen up and undefeated South Barwon and sixth placed Leopold to finish the home and away season.
The Eagles are in third spot and have a two-game gap plus percentage over Geelong West and Colac.
“It’s a very strong comp, certainly the strongest comp I’ve ever coached,” coach Andrew McInerney said.
“When you’ve got teams that have three or four VNL players in them, it’s pretty high standard.
“I’m definitely looking forward to playing South Barwon again before finals because we didn’t have our best performance against them the first time. We’ve done a heap of research on that game and I’m keen to see if our strategies that we’ve come up with will get a better result for us.”
Newtown & Chilwell all but locked in the double chance in round 13 against Colac. With scores level at three-quarter time, the Eagles scored 16 goals to three in a powerhouse final term.
“It was a horrible day – really tough conditions to play in and the first three quarters were to and fro,” McInerney said.
“In the last quarter we had a specific plan to try to convert all our centre passes and if we could get some interceptions in defence and convert those, then we would look after ourselves, but none of us saw that score line coming in the last quarter.
“My team has a wealth of experience and I think that probably shone out a little bit that some of the older heads, they just know how to move better in the rain and the wet court, how to position their body to our advantage so it was very pleasing.”
One of the reasons behind the win was the form of goal defence Natalie Tommasini.
“She was unbelievable,” McInerney said.
“It was like she was playing on a dry court and everyone else was playing on a wet court.”
McInerney also made positional changes by starting Alex Booker at goal attack in the second half and moving Julia Woolley to goal shooter in the final quarter to combat the dominance of star Colac defender Indya Forde.
“She’s (Forde) a very good player and we were probably struggling a little bit getting the ball into the right spots to shoot,” he said.
“I just thought (I’d) put Julia back there in shooter and let her run the circle, because with her knowledge and ability, she ran rings around the defenders in that last quarter. And we’ve had fresh legs with Alex there, so we could certainly run the game out from a goal attack perspective.”
GEELONG WEST took a huge step towards qualifying for finals with a 20-goal win against Grovedale. Alahria Smith played in a number of positions and was the fourth placed Giants’ best.
ST ALBANS continued its rapid development with a three-goal win against Bell Park with Sade Stafford shooting 33 goals from 40 attempts.
SOUTH BARWON stayed undefeated with midcourter Breanna Beckley starring while Ellen Doyle shot 65 goals.
LEOPOLD defeated St Mary’s by six to bring up win number five for the season.
