The Examiner's Rob Shaw, Josh Partridge, Ben Hann and Brian Allen unpack and discuss sports news from across Northern Tasmania. Video by Aaron Smith, Paul Scambler and Phillip Biggs (24/5/2024)
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00:00Welcome to episode 53 of the Press Box The Examiner's weekly sportscast.
00:12Ben, what are you wearing on your head?
00:16Well, this happens about four or five times a year, Brian, when you're a West Coast fan,
00:20so I'm going to soak in all the happiness and joy of beating the Dees on Sunday night.
00:26We've got the best pro in the comp, he's only nine games in,
00:28so it's a pretty good time to be a West Coast fan.
00:30Enjoy the moment, Ben.
00:32We're going to revive a popular segment from when we first started the Press Box.
00:37No, it's not Hanny's hard hitters.
00:39That's impending its return, though.
00:41Oh, we can't wait.
00:43No, we're going to talk about our highlights of the week,
00:45and we were all very busy over the weekend.
00:48We had a lot of sport that we covered,
00:49and we're just going to talk through our major moments of the weekend.
00:52Brian, you're first up. What was the highlight of the weekend?
00:55Yeah, so I went to the Longford and Roach Relie blockbuster game in the NTFA Premier,
01:00and yeah, it lived up to its hype as a great game,
01:05but it was all drama at the end because, yeah, with the scoreboard,
01:11Roach Relie got a goal with about two minutes to go,
01:14and they were 12 points down, basically, from what I could tell on the scoreboard.
01:19And then, yeah, 30, 40 seconds later, they were in front on the scoreboard.
01:25They jumped up a couple of goals, and it seemed that they led by two points.
01:30So I was confused by that, and there was a lot of yelling from the sidelines,
01:36and everyone was sort of saying whether the scoreboard was right or wrong,
01:40and that obviously went on for the next minute and a half until the siren went,
01:46and nobody else scored.
01:48And then, yeah, obviously, with the confusion, a few players threw their hands out to the side
01:54and wondered what was going on.
01:57And then everyone sort of just gathered in the middle from both teams,
02:01and everyone just watched the two goal umpires go over towards the scoreboard
02:07and do, like, the crosschecks.
02:08And having actually umpired as a kid, you know, like, the score's not final
02:12until the umpires go and check it and, like, wave the flag and make it absolutely final.
02:20So we were all just sort of waiting for that moment,
02:23and I guess, like, if you'd followed the scoreboard closely enough,
02:27I was like, oh, Longford's won this game, but we just need to be sure.
02:32And so then it was readjusted, and Longford had actually won by four points.
02:37And, yeah, it was just funny.
02:40I asked Coach Mitch Stagg after the game, I said, you know,
02:44what did all that scoreboard situation do for you?
02:46And he said, not much.
02:49And I had the quote there that, my heart was beating out of my chest, I must admit.
02:54So, obviously, it made for a sort of interesting write-up.
02:58But, yeah, the one other thing I'll quickly mention is,
03:02I was just sitting at, like, half-forward for Rotorua E in the final quarter,
03:07and they were obviously pushing to try and win this game.
03:09They were about five goals down at three-quarter time.
03:12And Jordan Cousins, like, he's a great player for Rotorua E,
03:15and, yeah, he just sort of went into beast mode
03:18and started doing everything he could,
03:21and he ended up kicking, like, the goal of the year,
03:24which was him, I think it was a throw-in, he gathered it,
03:29he ran on an arc by the boundary, like, two or three metres in front of me.
03:34He's a left-footer, so he wheeled around on the left,
03:36and you could just, like, see straight away,
03:38like, it was just spearing towards the middle,
03:40but it's, like, the tightest angle from about 30, 40 metres out.
03:44I think I probably said to myself, oh, my God, that's going in.
03:48And, yeah, I just thought, like, you know,
03:52we do this footy reporting role, and you roll up to the ground,
03:56and, you know, you're hoping to see some good things,
03:58and I guess when you're sitting there,
04:00and you feel like you're in the front row seat
04:02to some pretty good spectacles of, like,
04:04what is going to be, you know, in terms of history,
04:08but, you know, thinking back to great moments in Tassie footy,
04:11it's great to be a part of it.
04:13Yeah. What about you, Josh?
04:14You went to the State League Derby Friday night.
04:16What was your highlight of that game?
04:18Well, mine's a bit more interesting.
04:21So, in the third quarter, Launceston held North Launceston goalless.
04:27North Launceston have been the dominant side of the competition.
04:29They've barely been touched all year,
04:31and then Lonnie, who have struggled with a lot of young kids,
04:34held them goalless.
04:35So I went over to North Launceston's huddle at three-quarter time
04:38just to see the vibe,
04:39and just the speech that Adrian Smith gave his boys,
04:42it was a bit of a rev-up.
04:44There was a fair bit more expletives that I'm about to convey to you,
04:47but he just said, what was that?
04:50Where is our leadership?
04:51And it was just fan- not fantastic,
04:53but it was great to see a nice little rev-up
04:56without going completely over the top and getting fully angry,
04:59but he really had his boys in nice and tight,
05:02and they were all hanging on everything he said,
05:04even though he was kind of giving it to them,
05:06which was kind of interesting.
05:07Was that third quarter more North Launceston
05:09maybe taking the foot off the pedal,
05:10or was Launceston being at their very best?
05:13North kind of came out, it seemed like,
05:15because the game was pretty much won at half-time,
05:19it seemed like North came out losing a bit of focus,
05:23and that kind of seemed to be the way it went.
05:27They were a bit sloppy, which was really interesting.
05:30I haven't really seen North be sloppy forever, really,
05:34and they just weren't playing very good footy,
05:38and I think Lonnie kicked two or three goals in that quarter,
05:41and it was never going to get them back in the game per se,
05:45but it was really interesting to see North not really play that well.
05:51Benny, you had a busy weekend as well.
05:53What was your footy highlight?
05:55Yeah, I was sort of all over the shop,
05:57but my last part of the day,
06:00the last second half of Old Scotch versus Lillydale,
06:02out at Lillydale, it was a fantastic game of footy,
06:05the best game of footy I think I've seen in Division 1
06:08since I've been in Launceston.
06:10It was such a high quality, two great midfields just going at it,
06:15and two great forward lines as well,
06:17so it was fantastic from start to finish.
06:19But the moment, I suppose, for me was thought to be two points,
06:23another little scoreboard malfunction.
06:25Lillydale, I thought they were two points up,
06:27a long ball I think from Sam Littrell,
06:30the ruckman of Old Scotch, deep into the forward line,
06:33and it was a real, and as much as I'm a West Coast fan,
06:36I hate to say this, it was a real Leo Barry sort of mark,
06:39really deep in the back line, and just was the defining moment.
06:45Had he punched it through for a behind,
06:47it would have been a draw as it turns out,
06:49so it was crucial that he went for the mark,
06:52but it was just, it capped off what was a best on ground performance
06:55for Louis Venn, and it was, yeah,
06:58capped off what was an amazing great country game of footy,
07:02great crowd, really vocal,
07:04and those two I think are in for a big year between each other I think.
07:09So it sounds like the scoreboard drama added to both of your days.
07:12Yeah, so they added to the confusion.
07:16Moving on to soccer as well,
07:18I went to the Lac-A-Sage Cup semi-final.
07:22Riverside had made the semi-finals,
07:23and they played Kingborough at Windsor Park,
07:25and it was a terrific game.
07:27In the end, Riverside took the lead early doors
07:30and held on until about half-time.
07:32Kingborough came back, a lot of controversy in the second half,
07:34and in the end Kingborough won it with a superb free kick in the last minute.
07:38But the highlight for me was I interviewed Noah Meese afterwards.
07:41Noah is a former Launceston City player.
07:44He now plays at Kingborough,
07:46and he'd had a really, really tough week.
07:48His grandfather died earlier in the week.
07:50His grandfather is Peter Meese, who's the patron of Launceston City,
07:53and it was a chance to talk to Noah about his week, about his move to Kingborough.
07:57And also Noah's good friends with Tom Prince,
08:01and a lot of people would know that Tom suffered a really bad health scare
08:06when he was running the Hobart Marathon earlier in the year,
08:09and Noah's been a regular visitor to see Tom.
08:12And just to talk about all the different things that Noah's been through
08:15and what a tough week it was for him.
08:17Yeah, I suppose these two kind of incidents
08:21have been really bonding for the soccer community, obviously.
08:24When Kingborough and Riverside played each other earlier in the year,
08:27Tom's dad actually played the first 11 seconds of the game,
08:30which is Tom's playing number.
08:32So I suppose from your perspective, Rob,
08:34how have these two moments, I guess, brought the soccer community together?
08:39Yeah, it's a good question.
08:40And it's lovely to see exactly that.
08:43There's a lot of rivalries in Tasmanian soccer,
08:46but it was lovely that all the clubs got together.
08:48Kingborough wore armbands to pay tribute to Peter.
08:52And the reaction that there's been to what's happened to Tom,
08:57not just at Riverside, but across the league, has been superb.
09:01And like you say, that moment earlier in the season down at Kingborough
09:03was a really touching moment.
09:05It's lovely when sport transcends sport,
09:08and you realise that it's just sport at the end of the day.
09:12Just wrapping up, Ben, you went to netball as well.
09:14What happened in the netball world?
09:16Yeah, I want to give them a quick shout out.
09:18Sunday was a bit of a special day for the netball community.
09:21Cavaliers and Hawks both hosted separate games against Hobart opponents.
09:25And they happened to have separate causes that they were playing for.
09:29So the Hawks had a lovely cause.
09:31It was Heidi Edwards, the granddaughter of club secretary Anne Pearce.
09:37She has alopecia, full alopecia as well,
09:40so no hair on her head or eyebrows or anything like that.
09:43She wears a wig.
09:45She's a great, bubbly, fantastic little girl, like such a great spirit.
09:50And so they donated the specially worn outfits in a charity.
09:57People were bidding on them, and all the money went to the foundation.
10:01And then on the Cavs' side, Hannah Goddard,
10:03who passed away about five years ago from cancer.
10:06They play one game every year to commemorate her and her legacy
10:11and encourage people to donate blood and plasma.
10:14Both are great causes, and I think it was a great celebration of community
10:17rather than netball, necessarily.
10:19And kind of a lovely theme to all that we've been talking about
10:22is that we're in a results business,
10:24but there's a lot more to sport than just who wins at the end of the day.
10:27That's it. The role of clubs is more than just the win-loss record.
10:30Yeah, that's right.
10:32Anyway, we've got another busy weekend coming up this weekend.
10:34Join us next week to hear all about it.