LOCAL FOOTY: TWO DAYS IN AUGUST (AND MAYBE ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER)

I better offer profuse apologies for taking so long between entries. There has been that much going on finding time to do something of this nature is a little too hard but having taken some time out of the grueling schedule it’s time to blog once again.

So where do we begin? Well there has been the agony of being told your services are not required in a playing sense for a number of weeks (very bitter pill to swallow), the annoyance of being left on the bench for close to 2 whole games for no apparent reason, and another twang of the hamstring causing me to miss a game in Yeppoon. OK, that’s the negative garbage out of the way. Time to get to the positive.

Since then it’s just been up and up and up. The side has won just about every weekend save for the week I was in Darwin (co-incidence????). After being a laughing stock for so long, after being bigger sideshows and sideshows Bob, Mal and Luke Perry, we managed to win enough games to play finals football. Normally by this time of the year it’s a time to be idle, try not to eat too much KFC with mixed results and generally concentrate on other necessary evils of life. Not this year. Not since 2001 has the rigors of football extended into August, given our season generally ends in late July/early August and the GF runs alongside the opening week of AFL finals. Heck, one of our players even planned a wedding for the weekend of the 2nd semi final figuring that our commitments would have been completed. At last report player and bride are still together in wedded bliss.

And so it was onto Stenlake Park, a ground where personal success has been non-existent and where team success has been so near but yet so far. The site of the first semi-final for this season where in the preliminary games Yeppoon beat Panthers in the Under 13’s (missed that game), Panthers held off Gladstone in the 15’s (to the frustration of a couple of the Muddies players and their coach it has to be said), and BITS predictably thrashed Panthers in the Under 17’s. After surviving the final cruel cut that 5 other players were less fortunate to avoid, it was a case of go through the routines that got us through this far and apply them in warm-up and on the ground. My routines for warm-up involve extended stretching, particularly for hamstrings and calves where I have had issues in recent years, and not touching the ball. On the ground it involves a simple game plan of taking it one quarter at a time (maybe some coaches can use that instead of one week at a time just to be different).

So to the game itself, and I got a grand total of 4 kicks. The first was a left foot snap which went through. The second was a right foot snap which went through after my usual 2nd quarter rest was extended into the 3rd. The 3rd drifted across the face but should have been a 3rd goal. The 4th was a chip pass inboard from 50 where I’ve been having a few shots lately (falling short more often than not). OK, so my impact was pretty good when analyzing the stats, and it was always satisfying taking the W in the side’s first finals appearance in 9 years.

Don’t remember much else, save for the fact that it was so much sweeter knocking the arch enemy (Panthers) out of the race. The song was belted out with gusto as we celebrated a reserves finals win for the first time since the 1998 Preliminary Final. Just another kick to the guts for Panthers though, who also manage to blow a big lead in the seniors to lose to BITS. Not that any of us reserves blokes watched it for we were long in celebration mode. In fact the most disappointed person in the region that weekend was the Morning Bulletin sports writer who now must find something else to write about in previews and reviews now that Panthers are out of the equation. He religiously writes about them every week.

Which brings me onto this weekend. It’s not often that the finals system stacks the odds in your favour. We were able to get a week’s rest whilst watching the top 2 sides battle it out at Yeppoon (the home side losing by a point to an inaccurate BITS in reserves), then playing the Prelim on our home ground at Kele Park. It’s not a matter of turning up or clocking off early (based on being a Doggies fan for so long it’s not hard to see why I’ve written this), so any win this Saturday will have to be earned. The ground itself was greasy after overnight rain that may clear on Friday, although the weather is certainly not what you’d expect for Central Queensland, cold and overcast.

As for the seniors, they’ve won their last 14 starts including the 2nd semi final win at Yeppoon against Yeppoon to book a spot at “The Big Dance”. On top of that, full forward Aiden Colbourne not only snagged the league leading goal kicker for the season (76 goals in the regular season) but also the coveted Bernie Gottke Medal for the league best and fairest. Confidence is not in short supply, and we will hopefully join them as they will face either Yeppoon or BITS on the One Day In September Capricornia Remembers.

About Mick Jeffrey

39 Year Old, 16 year Bulldogs. over 280 combined senior/reserves appearances for Brothers AFC in AFL Capricornia. 26 time Marathon finisher, three time Ultra Marathon finisher and three time Comrades Marathon competitor (though not finisher yet).

Comments

  1. Hiya Mick

    How are Cam Adam(Goose) and Charlie Ampt going for you?

  2. Mick Jeffrey says

    Charlie’s battling to recover from an ankle injury to make the GF. In his word’s, Goose is just “Hanging About”.

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