By David Nagel
Berwick’s quest for the perfect season remains intact – but only just – after the Wickers kicked two late goals to sink a brave Doveton by four points, 10.11(71) to 10.7(67), at Edwin Flack Reserve on Saturday.
Trailing by 10 points at three-quarter time the Doves took advantage of a strong breeze, kicking the first three goals of the final term to lead by nine points at the 24-minute mark.
Berwick’s 12-game winning streak appeared over, but a classy finish from Lucas Jellyman-Turner cut the margin to three. Jayden Graham then narrowly missed his opportunity to be the hero before running half back Luke Sheppard received a handball from Graham to kick the winner from 15 metres out at the 30-minute mark.
His thoughts were swirling as he ran into goal.
“I was crapping my pants to be honest,” Sheppard said shortly after the victory.
“It was a clean tap on by Gunny (Tim Gunn), then (Jayden) Graham gave me the hands and it was pretty straight forward in the end, but very nerve racking.”
The Wickers have been dominant in recent times, but it took a completely different set of skills to get across the line against the Doves.
“We’ve been travelling alright; beating teams convincingly, but today was our first real challenge to see how we would respond under real pressure,” Sheppard said.
“Doveton took it to us for pretty much the whole game, they pressed forward really well, their midfield got on top of ours I thought, but just to dig deep, when we hadn’t had that opportunity this year, to do that was really pleasing.”
Harry Money kicked three in his first game for the season for the winners, while skipper Madi Andrews joined Sheppard and Jayden Joyce as his sides’ best performers.
Doveton ruckman Russ Gabriel was superb, feeding Sam Raru, Nick Battle and Aaron Davey on a silver platter, while Taylor Joyce kicked three including a booming team-lifter in the final term.
A resurgent Narre Warren 8.9(57) is now double-chance bound after a stirring 19-point victory over arch-rival Cranbourne 4.14(38) at Kalora Park.
The Eagles led a scrappy first half by a point before the Magpies ran rampant, kicking 6.2 to 1.3 to take a 28-point lead at the final change. It was a special third term from the Magpies with two goals to Trent Cody, and singles to Jack Soroczynski, Sam McLean, Dale Gawley and Dylan Quirk cutting a swathe through the Eagles’ defence.
Cody was joined by fellow midfielders Josh Tonna, Dean Kelly and Michael Collins on the best players’ list.
In other games, Beaconsfield 12.12(84) proved too strong for Tooradin 9.7(61), while Officer 11.10(76) made it back-to-back victories with a convincing performance against Pakenham 5.6(36).
