Jimmy wrote:Legs, congrats on a good season from your team. It was tough early on for the blues in this game and I was genuinely worried. Legs very much improved and will look to build on this next year.
hold your heads up high legs fans and praise your team for a good year.
Yes Jimmy, Norwood can be pleased about their season of work. Unfortunately we cannot be pleased about the effort we put in today. It was substandard, and embarrassing for a 1st Semi Final.
It was hard to guage how good Sturt were because Norwood continued to cough the ball up when going forward, we did it all day. You could count the number of marks inside 50 on one hand. We have this neurotic compulsion to make the ball bounce at least twice before it reaches it's target. Did it ALL day!!!
To give an idea of the difference between the two sides, Norwood's best player today was Trotter, easily. And yet, he wouldn't have been in the best 10 players on the ground.
Unfortunately, the only way Norwood can win is to jump out of the box and set up a lead. The moment we slip behind, we drop off completely. Cockshell wouldn't have been able to mark the ball if he had a texta colour in his pocket!! Conditions must have been too perfect for him.
I was disappointed to see Stewie Bown and Matty Dawes chaired from the ground after the game, it is obviously their last matches. They have been wonderful servants for Norwood and always give 100%. We have too few of these types of player already, so we are going to need to recruit very well in the off season.
The game plan .. a shammozzle. I have no idea what we were trying to achieve out there today .. none whatsoever. Norwood scored 5 of our 9 goals in "junk time" when Sturt had taken their feet of the pedal, otherwise it would have been a lot worse. The word going around the club prior to today was Hill may hold onto his job due to some encouraging performances. After today, they may need to re-think that strategy.
Today was a little like round 1 at Norwood Oval. You almost felt you wanted to call for a count because everywhere the ball went, there were at least 1-2 more Sturt players at the ball than Norwood ... sometimes 3, and on one occasion there was 4!!! One Norwood player trying to beat 5 Sturt players. And you looked around the field and STILL couldn't find any loose Norwood men. We just didn't work anywhere near as hard as Sturt did today, and good luck to them for the rest of the finals.