By RUSSELL BENNETT
ELLINBANK AND DISTRICT FOOTBALL LEAGUE
REVIEW – ROUND 4
NAR Nar Goon coach Tom Hallinan put three pillars in place for his side this season – good habits, togetherness… and fun.
While the group has always been tightknit – more than most in the competition – bad habits had crept in over recent years and footy, from the outside looking in, didn’t look as joyous for them.
Hallinan didn’t want to call it a line in the sand game for his side on Saturday, but it was.
They may have only been 15-points down on the scoreboard, but in reality they’d played 10 minutes of good footy in the entire first half against premiership aspirants Kooweerup in front of a big crowd on the front oval at Toomuc Reserve. They were staring down the barrel of a meek loss, and Hallinan wasn’t going to stand for it any more. His address in the rooms at the main break spared no one, but it was with a purpose – the Goon’s leaders needed to stand up; Brent Hughes, Chris Adams, Mat Slattery and Sam Van Der Zalm just to name a few.
“Herb – start smiling mate… Skipper – put your head up and be aggressive… change the course of what’s going on! Blame, blame, blame boys – all of you. Take it on yourself and take some responsibility!” the coach (Tom Hallinan) pleaded.
“It’s not about a lack of skill or ability boys – it’s just between the ears.
“We need to mature and we’ve got a magic moment here boys that could be a real turning point for us.
“The Garfield game was nothing compared to where the next 60 minutes of footy can take us – not just as a footy team but as a club!
“You can choose to be walked all over, or you can choose to make a change.”
Something clicked, and in the second half Josh Grant, Brendan Hermann, Luke Failla, Ash Adams and Matt Stevens, in addition to the likes of Van Der Zalm, Hughes, Chris Adams and Slattery made the decision – enough’s enough.
From a 15-point half-time deficit, to a 15-point win – 10.8 (68) to 6.17 (53) – the Goon had taken their magic moment and run with it.
And Kooweerup, like Garfield the week before, has been put on notice. The Goon’s watershed day could just be the trigger for something special.
“It’s all between the ears, boys,” Hallinan told his charges in the rooms after the game.
“From now on – the negative stuff stops, the baggage you’ve been wearing stops and it’s all about 2015.
“You’ve turned the tide through belief and making the choice to do something about it.
“That’s our benchmark now.”
Kooweerup, on the other hand, was found wanting in the second half when the game was there to be won. But the harsh reality was that they completely kicked themselves out of what should have been a dominant position at half-time. But with a whopping 15 scoring shots over the first two quarters, they could only manage 5.10 to the Goon’s 4.1.
Luke Walker, Paul Gramc, the McGrath boys, and Shaun Marusic were Kooweerup’s best but they seemingly ran out of steam late in the contest, just when the Goon lifted and the quality of the delivery into the Demons’ forward line dropped away drastically. Outside of a couple of exceptions, Kooweerup’s lack of run out of defensive 50 was obvious. It could be that the group’s fitness was found wanting, but, far more likely, it was down to the Goon disrupting their structures.
“Some of those boys have never been really challenged because they were good juniors and things came a bit easy, or over the past couple of years they’ve become confused about their footy,” Hallinan told the Gazette about his side after the game.
“If they could lose their identity as a player, or their faith, they had.
“We played 10 minutes of footy in that first half and we were only 15 points down so we were very fortunate – we just needed a change of direction.”
