By Jason Lappin, 1st XVIII Coach
On Wednesday, 19 March, St Patrick’s College 1st XVIII played in the annual Respect Cup match against St Joseph’s Geelong. This is a very important game on the calendar and coincides with International Women’s Day, which was this on 8 March. The day also offers an opportunity for the boys to support our ‘sister school’ Loreto College Ballarat in their game against Sacred Heart Geelong.
The boys played first in extremely challenging conditions in the middle of the day. The temperature would have been pushing 35C in the direct sunlight.
The first quarter didn’t start well for the Paddy boys, St Joey’s fast paced style of football caught our boys off-guard and we were quickly a goal down. We won the very next centre clearance through Ethan Drever and Charlie Elliott who had followed the ball forward after winning the ruck tap kicked a great running goal to get us on the board. However, we were quickly back to one goal down as Joey’s kicked a goal from the very next centre clearance.
Whilst we were doing well in the contest, Joey’s were penetrating our D50 with fast, aggressive ball movement. Jacob Martin, Jake Abrams and Tessie Liem were under a lot of pressure with the ball coming in so fast. They did a great job considering the amount of ball that was coming their way. We went to the quarter time break down by 15 points.
Fraser Molan kicked an absolute dart early in the second quarter to find Riley Hiscock who kicked truly from 25m out on a tight angle. The second quarter was a bit of an arm wrestle as we tried to stifle their ball movement with greater pressure. As with most SPC teams, we were very strong in the contest and our tackling was impressive, however we were struggling to move the ball on the long skinny GMHBA ground. Each team would kick one more goal for the quarter and we were down by 10 points going into half time.
Second half
We made a couple of positional changes at half time that paid dividends immediately. Lachie Squire was moved to half back with Taj Bowman and Kade Hilton was moved to the midfield rotation. All three would become pivotal to us having a much stronger second half.
Kade Hilton was the most influential player on the field in the second half with a couple of goals to go along with multiple goal assists. Tesloach Lual along with inside-mids Ethan Drever, Fraser Molan, Lincoln Koliba and Kade Hilton continued to drive the ball forward from stoppages and we started to get control of the game.
Some boys started to cramp in the stifling conditions and we had to rotate very heavily to keep fit players on the ground. We battled on to level the score at three-quarter time. We felt that we had a bit of momentum as the Joeys players started to really tire. After a couple of early misses from us, Joeys kicked the first goal of the last quarter. Even though the players were tired, the intensity around the contest lifted, with the stakes of the game becoming extremely evident. We kicked the next goal to tie the scores again at 43 apiece.
Tashaun Wright got on the end of a deep entry from impressive newcomer Archie Elliott, but he narrowly missed to the near post. Kade Hilton took the advantage from a free kick to Tashaun Wright off a deep entry and we were up by seven with five minutes to play. Kade then had another very smart piece of play where he was able to get behind the defence and smartly centred the ball to Tashaun who kicked truly under immense pressure.
Final score: SPC 8.8.56 to SJG 5.14.44
Goal Kickers: Tashaun Wright 2, Kade Hilton 2, Charlie Elliott 1, Lincoln Koliba 1, Riley Hiscock 1
Best Players: Ethan Drever, Kade Hilton, Jake Abrams, Fraser Molan, Lincoln Koliba, Tessie Liem
