Warriors,

Our AFL 9s team kicks off the match reports this week – and its a ripper! Read on..

AFL 9s Match Report – Clint Baxter
This is the first match review for the Warriors Monday night AFL9s team. First, a bit of background. Legend has it that Marko started the team years ago to maintain the Warriors fitness and footy skills during the off-season, and as an excuse for a beer of a Monday night.

After wallowing virtually winless at the bottom of Div4 season after season, things slowly started to slot into place during the Spring of 2023, with consecutive wins culminating in a narrow loss in the grand final. Suddenly and to everyone’s surprise our premiership window had opened! Being a grand finalist, the Warriors were moved up to Div3 for the Autumn 24 season – a mountain surely too high to climb. Long story short, we needed a fill-in one night and so Ash Klein (Hawks CEO) asked Sam Mitchell along. Yep, that Sam Mitchell. Perhaps it was the infectious Warriors culture, or a need to escape the glare of Monday night footy shows, whatever it was Sam quickly became a fixture and allowed the rest of us to all play with extra confidence, dash and dare. We quickly rose up through the ladder week-by-week and secured a famous premiership against the previously unbeatable Solway Big Dogz. Marko was like a proud dad holding that cup.

Riding our newfound success we enrolled for the Winter 24 season, and went into last night’s top of the table clash still unbeaten. With some late outs including Azza, CT, Frenchie, Richo and Marko (still on his TayTay-esk 2024 World Tour), we again turned to Ash Klein for a fill-in. Enter Aaryn Siposs – former St Kilda player turned NFL punter who played in the 2022 SUPERBOWL. Surely, we could now take down Div1 champs St Michael’s Dragons. But the Dragons had their own ace up their sleeve. One Eddie Betts. Lindsay Smith looked a touch nervous (physically ill) when he lined up next to Eddie and started calling for urgent reinforcements before the game had even started. We double teamed, we triple teamed, but nothing could stop the smooth Dragons getting the ball down to Eddie Betts who slotted everything from anywhere. We kept shuffling. Micaiah into ruck, Dan onto Eddie, Sipo forward, Sipo back, Mitchell on Eddie, Mitchell back to mid. Rodd and Ricey both continued to run their guts out up and down creating opportunity and defensive pressure in equal measure. Eventually it started to click. Matty C marked strongly and converted, Lindsay outsmarted all for a cheeky goal, and Sipo started plucking marks and hitting the scoreboard. Sadly the clock beat us and we went down 47-63. We walked away satisfied that we had competed with the very best and now understanding the requirements of a Div1 team. But more than that, on a cold dark Monday night in Burwood, we had all enjoyed front row seats at the Eddie Betts show.

Womens Non-Contact – Kirsty D
Another beautiful morning for a game of footy last weekend at Port Melbourne. The exciting news was we had opposition as Port had entered a non-contact team! This made us wonder just how our skills would match up! We needn’t have worried. From the first centre ball-up with our talented ruck, Sandra tapping down into the hands of our waiting midfielders, Susie, Sunita and Abi who with slick movements drove the ball into our forwards. All the skills training that supercoach Sue had been teaching us came to the fore and we looked pretty good against the seasoned contact football campaigners from Port and we kicked the first goal of the day. Helen – great defence making good front position, Abi – good attack on the ball, clean hands, Doc Cathy here there and everywhere! Sunni – good positioning & defence, Reyzl – strong hands, good kick outs, Susie – dynamic bursts from centre, Lou – fast and clean, Ren – dependable, strong, lovely mark and goal, Jen – makes great position on field, tough to play-on. Great to see Kylie, from Port Melbourne kick a lovely goal on the run. Comments from the sideline at the start of the last quarter, as Sandra tapped to Susie “it was like Gawn to Petracca!” with Susie connecting beautifully with her kick for an illegal point! Thanks to Bourkie and Sue for umpiring and Flea for her baseline support.

Mens 50s – Ace Dusty
When I think of Port Melbourne, I think of the ruthlessness of the Painters and Dockers Union, pubs that open at seven am and dockworkers who spoke out of the corner of their mouths and knew how to dispose of a body if the need arose. But it’s a gentrified suburban enclave now, all cappuccinos and cavoodles by the look of bescarfed clientele who attended the 50s match against the Port Melbourne Colts. Despite being undermanned and suffering crippling injuries in the opening stanza, it was not entirely surprising that the battle-hardened Warriors won in a canter over a Colts side that could barely muster a trot by the end of the match.

From the moment that the ‘Italian Stallion’ Jezza, with his long, black mane flowing behind him, dobbed a goal from the impossible angle with the insouciant ease of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat the game was on our terms. Pawsey picked up kicks at will in the middle, Grunta dominated on his wing and Rev seemed to descend from the clouds whenever the defence needed an outlet kick. It was great to see one of the new recruits, Julien – whose slender frame and darting eyes give him a fox-like presence on the field – using cunning and speed to pick his way through the laboring Port midfielders.

But the game was possibly won in the back half, where the resolute Warrior defence stood firm and repelled increasingly frantic Port forward forays. To a man we were able to execute precise pointing and shouting, accompanied by a new feature we have termed G.A.D. (Gravity Assisted Defense). This brilliant ploy entails running towards the ball and then, when you are about a metre away, spontaneously losing all control over the lower half of your body and collapsing to the ground. If you land on the ball, the defender then flails like a dying fish until the umpire blows his whistle and stoppage team, led by a ebullient Carbo, arrive to work their magic. If you land on the opposition forward, you simply pin them to the ground until the cavalry arrive and the ball is swept away. Bruisa is a very good exponent of it, and for an opposition forward being landed on by Bruisa is (as the name suggests) a contusional experience. Eddy is a master of G.A.D, he can fall four or five times on the same forward in the space of fifteen seconds – leaving them feeling like they’ve been attacked by a pack of terriers all shouting, ‘Boundary!’ for no apparent reason.

As the ball floated away from the defensive half once again, I watched Clint (part man/part antelope) striding across the sun-drenched turf and banging it long to the outstretched tentacles of Rob – I looked across to the boundary and waved at Kenny, whose positivity and belief (along with the whiteboard genius of Magoo) has inspired the team to victory. He didn’t wave back, maybe he didn’t see me.

Mens 35s – Louie
Beaconsfield vs Warriors
20 – 7 – 127
1 – 2 – 8

Best: JJ, Battsy , Marko , Micah , Timmy Clappers
Goal: Justin

We ventured down to Perc Allison Reserve on a great day for Football, We knew it was going to be a huge hill to conquer but we are warriors and don’t hide from any challenge.
This first 10mins showed us how good Beaconsfield are as a well-oiled machine and we were down by 6 goals already, but we did hold it for the rest of the qtr after some tactical changes.
The second qtr we started a little like the first, but we did switch on and started to fight back a little, with no help from the umps which we had to prove about 3 times in a tackle that they should be awarded a free kick.
We came in at half time about 12 goals down, but we still where fighting and that’s what i encourage our warriors to do, dig deep and fight back. And the Warriors did , Battsy with his intercept marks and dash out of the back line, JJ finally getting angry and breaking through the midfield with guys hanging off him and getting it forward, Clappers trying his hardest and using his skill to get us the ball and even screaming at the opposition to miss his shot, Marko as he does a great speedy Gonzales impression to his opponents and gets the ball and moves it forward.
Everyone stepped up and we definitely held our own in the 3rd qtr to the Beaconsfield team , which showed and awarding us a few extra free meters on free kicks.
Last qtr seen us fade just a little as the players started to lose their energy from that big 3rd qtr and we only had 3 on the bench and one was an awesome bloke from the 50s in the name of Bruiser.
We did finally get a goal which was from some great play out of the backline into the forward line to one of our new players Justin.
All in all the game was in 2 halves and our second half we played very well and we can see we can match any good team and once we get some more numbers and players in we could actually take some of these bigger teams down.
Lots to improve on and we learnt heaps.
Like to thank the new players that joined us – Adrian, Justin, and Bryan
Also great to see first game to Jules.
Also great thanks to Bruiser for playing and ED for coming down and potentially playing.
All i can say is Watch this space as the warriors are Coming…