By Tyler Lewis
Sunday was a difficult day for the Dandenong Cricket Club.
The Panthers entered their round-14 clash with Melbourne at The Albert Ground in third position on the Victorian Premier Cricket ladder after recording and amazing victory over Essendon Maribynong Park (EMP) (fourth) just last week.
Results across the competition had to be utterly flawless for the Panthers to miss the four, with Ringwood (sixth) needing to beat Carlton (second) with a bonus point, Box Hill (fifth) needing to defeat EMP and of course, the Demons beating Dandenong.
And as cruel a game that cricket is, the results played out seamlessly, with the reigning premiers falling from third position to fifth by the end of the days play.
Panther’s champion Emma Gallagher was ‘flat’ on Monday, as she said the group has made a habit of cutting it too fine this summer.
“I mean flat is probably the main word to use,” she said.
“Disappointed, definitely, probably a little bit of shock, we kind of always consider ourselves a team that should be in the top four.
“We’ve got ourselves out of some pretty tight situations through the season, I think everyone sort of knows, we kind of just believe we can get ourselves out those situations and get through to make it happen.
“It didn’t work yesterday… for me I had it penciled in the diary, the semi-final and the final and not in an arrogant way, but keep those dates free sort of thing, deleting those items out of the calendar was pretty depressing this morning,” Gallagher said.
To add salt into the wound, and a further cause for disappointment was the Panthers seconds and thirds played in semi-finals on the Sunday and also suffered defeats.
While Gallagher said the dissatisfaction was with the talent within the change room after the game, a key factor in the disappointment was not being able to spend another couple of weeks on the field together, and on the track with the other two sides.
“Sitting in the change room and looking around, we have some outstanding cricketers,” she said.
“Not only that, we are a great unit as a team, the biggest disappointment is we genuinely enjoy spending time together and loved playing cricket together this season.
“And to think we don’t get to do that next week really hurts.
“I don’t think it was down to last week, even then we didn’t put a full performance on the park, for us, we haven’t put a full performance on the park all year.
“We probably had one of our better batting performances yesterday, there were moments where we didn’t put away a bad ball and left a few runs out there, but we thought we were in a position to win that,” Gallagher said.
Though it is easy to say the Dandenong side was unable to capture the win in a pre-finals do-or-die, Gallagher is confident it was some early games that cost her side a spot in March cricket.
“We lost games to Melbourne and Carlton early in the year that we were in positions to win,” she said.
“Box Hill a couple weeks ago, we were in a position to win and let it slip, particularly those early ones for me – Melbourne and Carlton – they were the top two teams on the ladder and we could’ve been in a position to beat both of them.
“Not only is that points on the ladder, but momentum early on, there are definitely some clear games in our mind, we can only blame ourselves really”.
