R20: Port v West review

[Macca19]

RESERVES

A 6-goal streak during thie third quarter sealed a West Adelaide victory in the reserves match today, with West Adelaide winning by 9 points.

After falling a couple of goals behing during the third quarter, West Adelaide kicked 6 goals in 12 minutes to build a match winning 5 goal lead at three quarter time. Despite the Magpies having 80% of the play in the last quarter and keeping their opponents goalless for the last quarter, poor entry into the forward lines and poor skills cost them a genuine shot at winning the match. They kicked four unanswered goals in the last quarter to fall 9 points short.

Port struggled for height in the end with both their ruckmen leaving the ground in the opening half, Clayton Crabbe with a groin strain and Shaun Smith with concussion.

West Adelaide had too much height and too much run around the ground. Patrick Wiggins dominated up forward with 4 goals and a number of marks. Simon Munn, Lance Oswald and Matthew Rowe were also good for the victors.

Roc Harry kicked 4 goals for the Magpies, whilst Kerren Hall, Joel Montgomerie and Mark Dolling were also good.

WA 5.4 / 6.5 / 14.6 / 14.11 (95)
PA 2.0 / 5.4 / 9.6 / 13.8 (86)

BEST:
WA: Wiggins, Munn, Oswald, Rowe, Miller
PA: Harry, Hall, Montgomerie, Dolling, Coleman

GOALS:
WA: Wiggins 4; Oswald, Munn, Bennett 2; Archibald, Wood, Mensforth, Row
PA: Harry 4; Coleman 3; Gates 2; Pickett, Dolling, Caterall, Hay

SENIORS

Port Adelaide Magpies kept themselves in the top 5 with a mostly unconvincing 56 point victory against West Adelaide today.

Port Adelaide lairised and wasted the ball whilst West were admirable in defeat. They never seemed out of the match until late in the last quarter when Port piled on 5 quick goals to finish the match.

In w hat was a high scoring contest, neither side seemed to worry too much about defence. Ports defence was an absolute rabble for most of the day, with Wests smaller players regularly finding gaps inside 50 to mark and goal in.

Both sides spent time in control of the match early on, with both sides kicking 7 goals in the opening quarter. West kicked the last three goals of the quarter to lead by 2 points heading into the first change.

Port kicked 10 goals in the second quarter to lead by 5 goals at the main charge. In what was a high scoring half of football, the sides kicked 29 goals to half time.

Jeremy Clayton, who started in the forward pocket, weaved his magic to kick 5 goals up to half time. Clayton, along with Kyle Jenner and Luke Slattery were the Magpies best up to half time.

West Adelaide were best served by Ben Hollands, Kris Vanderloo and Daniel Caire early.

The third quarter slowed down from the first half, with both sides skills letting them down when heading into attack. Port began to over handball the ball and had trouble finding space up forward. They led by 42 points at the last change.

The start of the last quarter was all West Adelaide as the Bloods kicked 3 goals in the opening 10 minutes of the quarter. The match started to turn into more of a pub fight with numerous spot fires breaking out all over the ground. 18 year old Caolan Buckley was the cause of a lot of the distress but it worked in West Adelaides favour. Jeremy Clayton took exception to a heavy tackle from Buckley and they began to wrestle. As Clayton began to walk away, Buckley grabbed him by the top of his jumper and slung him to the ground from behind which started a 30 second fist fight between the two. Somehow, West ended up with a free down the ground and goaled.

30 seconds later, Ivan Maric lost his cool at Buckley, grabbed him in a headlock 80 metres off the ball, slung him to the ground and dug his knee into his back. This led to some confusion as the ball, which was in a Port players arms after a free kick in play, travelled 100 metres down the ground to Buckley on the half forward flank. He kicked to Ben Haynes in the pocket, who turned around and headbutted Matthew Lokan straight in front of the umpire. Haynes was reported, the kick reversed and the ball travelled 50 metres down the ground again. Haynes had been taking exception to Matthew Lokans tagging tactics all match, which led to Haynes taking himself off the ground twice and Matthew Lokan abusing him from on field.

The match ended with 5 straight Port goals after Port finally got their act together in entering their forward lines.

Best for the winners was Jeremy Clayton. He played argubaly his best ever game since crossing to South Australia, finishing with 6 goals and a stack of unbelivable disposals in close which you could only see to believe. Young gun Kyle Jenner and the ever erratic Clive Waterhouse kicked 4 goals each, whilst John Baird, Troy Butcher and 4th gamer Lindsey Thomas all had excellent matches. Luke Slattery continued his fine form as well.

West Adelaide tried their hearts out and performed admirably well. Their young players showed class and really took it up to their more experienced opponents for most of the match.

Daniel Caire ended with 3 goals, whilst Ben Hollands, Marc Dragicevic, Caolon Buckley and Kris Vanderloo played well.

Port may be able to lairise against the bottom placed side, but against a team with more experience and better consistency probably would have lost. Their win was unconvincing and how they will play in the finals, if they even make them, is still up in the air.

With two tough games to finish the season, they simply need to keep winning to stay above South and Norwood.

PA 7.1 / 17.5 / 21.8 / 26.13 (169)
WA 7.3 / 12.3 / 14.8 / 17.10 (113)

BEST:
PA - J Clayton, Slattery, Jenner, Thomas, Butcher, Baird, Lokan
WA: Hollands, Caire, Vanderloo, Dragicevic, Buckley, Donaldson

GOALS:
PA - J Clayton 6; Jenner, Waterhouse 4; Thomas, Slattery, Davis, Poulton 2; Lokan, Butcher, Biacsi, Summerton
WA: Caire 3; Barnett, Donaldson, Hollands, Vanderloo 2; O'Sullivan, Haynes, Porplyzia, Bayliss, Buckley, Schmidt

[GWW]

How did Looby play macca19?

Do you think Buckley from West is a candidate to get drafted?

[Macca19]

How did Looby play macca19?

Do you think Buckley from West is a candidate to get drafted?

Looby didnt see a lot of it from what I could tell, but he didnt spend a heap of time on the ground. Did a couple of excellent 1 percenters.

I definately think Buckley is a draft candidate. I would love for the Power to draft him. Probably a 3rd round pick.

[redandblack]

Excellent summary, Macca.

Your comments about the 18 year old Buckley were interesting and you perhaps might agree that the initial free kick was against Clayton for throwing several roundhouse rights at Buckley in front of everyone in the grandstand that started that phase of play. It was, of course, clearly reportable, but the umpire was weak.

Although having no bearing on the final result, the 29 to 16 free kick count to Port was hard to understand. There also seemed to be a different view of different players by the umpires. Jeremy Clayton (who was clearly the class act on the ground) received 6 free kicks, whereas Haynes, under constant harassment from Lokan, was dealt with severely all day.

I don't mention this in any way relating to the result, but only in relation to the way one particular umpire dealt with different players.

Apart from that (and we all see things from our own team's perspective), I enjoyed reading your very fair and accurate summary, Macca.

[scottroo]

macca how do you rate daniel caire? draft chance?

[redandblack]

I'd be interested in Macca's thoughts, too. Caire at this stage is a "mini-Porplyzia", with plenty of skill. His size might be the only thing that stops him being drafted, perhaps.

[Macca19]

Pacey. Nice skills. Gets in good position. Size would definately be a worry. Theres not many 175cm players running around in the AFL. Most players that size need to have a big X factor- for instance, guys like Peter Bell, Jeff Farmer and Shane Crawford are 175cm or smaller. Theres usually on average one guy that size per list.

Ive only seen him once so I dont know if he has that X factor, but he did more than enough yesterday to suggest he would play 100 SANFL games if he wanted to.

[scottroo]

I know him pretty well, and really wants to suceed