Ahh! The season is over, it proved to be an awesome one at that. On the final night of competition the weather was cool, the grounds were moist and shrouded in low lying fog. I guess the temp would of been around 8-10deg, then again Jacq and i stepped out from a toasty 323 :/ Regardless of a victory, Team Suss would finish 5th meaning non-qualification for the finals series.
How the game panned out
We did good. Striking form late in the season we went into this game confidently. The first 5 minutes we squandered possession with poor handwork and lazy dummy half plays. I went thru to the line but with unco hands, did not ground the ball properly(it was going to happen sooner or later!). Fortunately we did not conceed a try. Anyhow my memory is terrible when it comes to recalling tries, however what i do remember is setting up the first of the night. We put on a second, and then conceeded a soft try due to crappy 1 v 1 defence. By half time i sensed that some people felt that they'd been shot in the foot, quek copped a bitchslap to the back - so that got him fired up.
In an attempt to maintain composure we were blessed with possession and from the first play i was lucky to slot in as first reciever. What i do remember is being a pain in the butt and slowing down the play to compose our game play. With a fair bit of luck we were able to go thru for a try. Our second half of the game was somewhat lazy. No one was coming onto the ball, possession remained 1:1 however territorially we were working alot harder on defence. This resulted in two more tries against however by this stage we'd stamped our mark and finished victors 5-3. I had an awesome game, it felt good being able to manipulated the defence :D Perhaps i'll write some more after speaking to the boys about the game. Recall an earlier entry:
Season Prediction
First few games will prove interesting. There will be alot of shoddy footwork, teamplay and movement on our behalf. Just like our first few games, the newbies may feel the pinch of playing 'pro-comp'.
Common sense, our first few games were marred by soft tries.
Pre-midseason, tone will still be dropping gimmies, the girls will still ask for more ball. The newbies will understand that they need to run onto the ball.
Around this point in time admittedly the girls weren't getting equal share of posession. However, i think they realised towards the end of season that it wasn't about gender, it was about coming onto the ball :) Tone successfully dropped the occasional 1-2 tries but thats ok.
Midseason to end run we will have our first intercept try, creativity and plays wont work as the initiative will be low but the discipline will be awesome. By now steve leads the league in tries, assists and intercepts and Quek sinbins 4 players in 5 mins whilst refereeing social comp.
We had a few intercept tries, i can only recall 1 from yours truely, and the outstanding intercept from Tone. After the game he stated that he couldnt gauge where the line was so he thought it'd be a good idea to dive onto the ground and slide. yea!! I'm sure there were more. Disipline was awesome. we were carving up mid field, and the lack of creativity meant we were spreading non-effectively. Steve did not lead the league in tries, assists and intercepts but had fun. Quek, to my knowledge, did not break his Personal Best of 2 in 10mins and in my opinion should work on that.
End season the team have made the finals an are chugging along like a well oiled machine. Dennis coathangers a fat chick and in the process fractures his collarbone, University exams are up and the team concedes the grandfinal victory. *cough* We anticipated our exams and figured 'why bother playing the finals series in the first place?'. So like a well oiled machine we mastermind 5th place.
Mark my words...
Ok, i've gotta work on my predictions.. Overall, everyone improved individually, the team effort improved, we made new friends, we yelled at each other, we had a group huddle(!), alex scored a try!, we came away with memorable moments. Cya next season.