Team Talk Rd 17 | The Courier | August 20, 2023
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00:00 Well, good morning to everyone. Sunday morning, the day after a big round in both the Ballarat
00:06 Football League and Central Highland Football League. Round 17 in each case. And first of all,
00:13 let's talk about a big upset quickly in the Ballarat League.
00:17 Yeah, backers march getting over the line against Sunbury by two points, which is,
00:21 we haven't had that many upsets this season, especially compared to last year, but that
00:25 for sure is one of them. Just adds another twist to that finals race as well.
00:29 Yeah, we'll talk more about that shortly, but it was the last home and away round
00:34 in the Central Highland Football League. Everything's set now for finals. And the biggest
00:39 news of all coming out of this round, and by the time most of our viewers are seeing us on screen
00:48 for our program here, they will have read that Gordon coach, Adam Toohey, season is over. He
00:56 suffered a shoulder injury late in the game against Belan on Saturday and damaged his AC joint. So a
01:05 big blow to the reigning Premier. He's one of the most skilful players in the competition. He was
01:11 going to play a big part in Gordon's run at a second premiership in a row, but for Adam Toohey,
01:19 it's season over and there couldn't be much bigger news.
01:23 Yeah, well, I guess lucky for him it's this year and not last year.
01:26 Oh, there's no such thing as lucky. I would not have thought it's lucky at all.
01:29 But yeah, Gordon arrested a few players as well this weekend and yeah, last quarter of the last
01:34 game of the home and away season. You hate to see it.
01:36 Games won and that happened. So yeah, that's a big blow for the Eagles. They've got depth,
01:42 but that's going to be tested without their coach on the field. But just running through
01:48 the results of the final home and away round, round 17, and the thriller of the day was Skipton
01:57 holding on, and I mean holding on against Bungaree by just three points. It went right down to the
02:04 wire. All those cliches, the demons, they kicked terribly for goal. The inaccuracy in front of goal,
02:13 well, it did cost them the game. Coach Ryan Waite wasn't pointing at that. There's more to a loss
02:18 than that. But by the same token, when you kick 14 behinds in a low scoring game, you convert two of
02:26 those and they win. They had a chance to win the game with a shot in the dying moments of the game.
02:32 That missed, which was, I guess it summed up their day. And so Bungaree, who was on top for much of
02:40 the season, they finished fourth. So let's quickly run through the results and then the final
02:47 structure of the top eight. Leamonth, they won the last round clash with arch rival Warburgh by
02:58 41 points. Dunstown, now it was always going to be a pretty big result, but they absolutely
03:05 thumped Newland. Both will be in finals next week, almost 10 goals there. The Towners,
03:10 they've really charged home and they could be an X factor if they can get through that first week
03:15 of the elimination finals. Bunyong, they were too good for Dalswood by 28 points.
03:22 I've already mentioned Gordon, they defeated Bolland, no surprise there, by 73 points. Hepburn,
03:28 they were pushed a little bit harder than many would have expected. They defeated Preswick by
03:33 just 18 points. So not a bad way for the Wickers to finish. Carnham-Lynton, they got home against
03:39 Clunes by 11 points. They trailed by almost five goals at quarter time and four goals at half time.
03:46 Saints and that, they pull out something special and another frustrating day for Luke Davidson's
03:51 Magpies, they've been so close against some of the best teams in the competition and they'll
03:57 have something to work on, but they've just come up short so many times. So Carnham-Lynton go into
04:02 the finals on the back of a win. We've already mentioned Skipton's close call against Bungaree
04:08 and Roquid Corandap had a big 91 point win over Beaufort. Beaufort, unfortunately, finishing the
04:15 year without a win and they get the wooden spoon. So quickly, Springbank finished as the minor
04:21 premier. They had a bye this round. Gordon second, Hepburn and Bungaree made up the top four. So the
04:28 qualifying finals will be between Springbank and Bungaree and Gordon and Hepburn. In fifth position
04:36 was Carnham-Lynton, sixth Skipton, then Dunstown and Newland. Carnham-Lynton will play Newland and
04:44 tell you what, they got a big chance at Saints of getting a finals victory the way Newland was going.
04:48 I know they had a few players out, but they were pretty disappointing today. And Skipton will play
04:53 Dunstown, which is red hot. So I'm looking forward to that. All the details of finals are
05:01 on our website so you can catch up with who's playing across all the grades, where and when.
05:06 Games will be at across the weekend at Warbra, Learmonth, Dunstown and Bunningham. So not in
05:15 any particular order there, but you can catch up with all the details online. Okay, that's the
05:22 summary of the last round of the CHFL. We've already mentioned a big upset in the Ballarat
05:28 League, but how did the match of the round go between two of the big guns, Daly and Melton?
05:33 Yeah, almost a grand final preview. Daly made it 2-0 against the Bloods this season, the only team
05:38 to take down Melton as well this season. So a 21 point win for Daly at Daly Park and they broke
05:44 away in the game. It was the fourth quarter that really set off the win. So what's that do?
05:50 It just opens up the race, doesn't it? Absolutely, absolutely. It looked like it was Melton
05:55 maybe head and shoulders above for most of the season, but if Daly, they kind of proved it was
05:59 no fluke, the win earlier in the season, even though Melton had a few out in that game,
06:04 they've backed it up now. So yeah, two teams to go head to head again in two weeks time as well. So
06:12 that one, I've got no idea who's going to win that one really.
06:15 Does that make it tougher do you think for a team like Sebas because who would they be
06:20 better suited to play early in the final, so in a preliminary final, Daly or Melton?
06:28 For Sebas to play? Yeah. Who are they more likely to be able to beat out those two?
06:32 I think Daly. They played pretty poorly against Daly earlier in the season at Daly Park, but they
06:38 were only three goals out of it. So if Daly grabs, steals the march and gets ahead of everyone,
06:44 yeah, it might be an interesting one. Just throw a few, well, cat among the pigeons as I say.
06:51 Yes, there's still a lot to play out. We've got one round left in the Ballarat Football
06:55 Netball League, but it's looking like those two sides will be Melton and Daly, the top two,
06:59 and just running through the rest of the games. I mentioned that backers march, two-point win
07:05 over Sunbury. If the Lions won that, they would have locked themselves into finals. They still have
07:09 a healthy percentage going head-to-head with Redan and East Point for the final two spots
07:15 in the top six, but they've got a pretty healthy percentage. Just looking at it here, it's about
07:19 15% more than Redan. But yeah, Ballarat's win against Redan last week delayed the
07:26 finals being locked in, finals picture being locked in, and then backers march win has done
07:31 the same. But I've spoken to Jason Williams quite a bit about the work he's doing down there, and he
07:36 had his eyes on this clash for quite some time. Even a month out, they were practising things for
07:41 that Sunbury game. It's almost their grand final by the sounds of it. Yeah, well, they rise up to
07:47 eighth on the ladder. They compete Ballarat now, so Ballarat moves down to ninth, who they play
07:52 next week as well. So that's another grand final for them, mate. Yeah, fair enough. But yeah,
07:56 good win for backers march, and they've had a really good month as well. The rest of the games,
08:00 all triple digit wins. So three triple digit wins, Sebastopol 151 points against Ballarat.
08:07 That was the margin. Yeah. Well, I hadn't caught up with that. 151 points. No one really saw that
08:13 coming. Oh, we see the win coming. Yeah, we would have tipped Sebastopol. Outside the Melton South
08:19 results, that's just about... It's bad. But they've had a game like that as well this year, Ballarat.
08:26 When they went down to Macparks to play Melton, they lost by about 121 points, which was just
08:31 out of the blue. It could be the fact that a young team, they've been up, they've played a lot of
08:36 debutantes this year, and maybe it's just at the end of a campaign and it's hard to really sustain
08:42 that. And they come up against Sebas, and they're a quality side, and they're not even at full
08:48 strength. Yes, there's still a few to come back for Sebastopol. They might even get J. Dowerhouse
08:53 back a week early. The NFL listed J. Dowerhouse, so he could line up against Radan next week,
08:59 which is not what the Lions fans would want to hear. But anyway, that's good. Other games around,
09:04 so East Point, 122 point win against Lake Wendaree. That margin, we expect it's a big margin,
09:11 even that is still quite a big margin. Jordan Johnson, seven goals to his name. Right, so he
09:16 signed on and then confuses the goods. Might be a Henderson medal chance as well. He's had a good
09:22 year, depends on how many votes Matt might be taking off him as well. So have to watch that
09:26 one player. And the last game of the round, Radan, 187 point win over Melton South. Isaac Grant had
09:32 10 goals when these two sides met earlier in the season. He had 11 on Saturday, so that's 21 goals
09:37 in two meetings. All right, so quickly, what does it do, anything, that loss, it brings Sunbury back,
09:43 but probably doesn't impact who plays final, so does it? Yeah, Sunbury, Radan still in the box
09:50 seat, you'd have to say, I guess with Radan's percentage booster and then also East Point
09:54 percentage booster. But that's three teams on 32 points with one game to go. So Sunbury next week
10:00 have Daly, so Daly would head in favourites to that, but their percentage is 151%, which is
10:06 15 clear of Radan and another 30 clear of East Point. So yeah, lock in Sunbury, Radan against
10:14 Sebastopol and East Point against North Barat. That's probably the ones to watch. If one of those
10:20 teams causes an upset, then they're in. Okay, so one week to go in the Home and Away series for the
10:26 Ballarat Football Netball League. And of course, we're into finals for the Central Highlands. Of
10:32 course, a big week ahead, we've got the first of our presentation nights, and we've got three this
10:37 week that we'll be covering both with live streams and live blogs to keep everyone up to date.
10:44 So on Tuesday night, we have the BFLW Best and Fairest and Presentation Night, and also the
10:52 Central Highlands Netball League, the Junior Netballers. And then on Wednesday night, we've
10:58 got the Central Highlands Football League Juniors. So their awards night to kick things off. So busy
11:03 week ahead, and we'll also have plenty of coverage leading into the first week of finals in the
11:09 Central Highlands Football League and Netball Leagues. So yeah, stay tuned. So thanks for
11:16 joining us on this big weekend of football. Some big news coming out of both competitions,
11:21 and we look forward to bringing you more of that during the week ahead.