Under 18s Match Report

Round 1 saw us head to Prospect to end the longest pre-season of all-time. Our players have been excellent during the break and then modified trainings, and were very happy to be finally playing a game of football. On the back of good training and earlier trial forms we selected 11 players to play their first under-18 game of football at SANFL level.

The biggest challenge for all teams at the moment is getting back to the way they want to play as quickly as possible and adjusting from small group training to the full game again. This match reflected that for us and, bar a 20-minute period of excellent football in the first half, we were quite scrappy for the remainder of the game.

Unfortunately we struggled to get first hands on the ball at stoppages and this meant we were playing from our defensive half for much of the game. When we had opportunities to move forward our structure wasn’t as good as it needs to be and the ball was turned over in dangerous spots through the middle of the ground. We needed to assess the situation better instead of trying to force kicks that weren’t on.

I was pleased with some individual performances. Lachie De-Cesare and Bailey Chamberlain were strong all day, Kane Sherlock was solid down back and Dylan White kicked 3 goals to go with 19 possessions in his first game of Under-18 football. We had no injuries to report from the match from our team and we send our best wishes to North Adelaide’s player who had a nasty fall on the far side in the second quarter.

Our players tried their hardest and are an excellent group to coach. We will identify focus areas for the week to ensure we continue to improve each week. We look forward to playing Central District at home this Saturday at 11:30am.

Paul Streatfield
U18 Coach