By JARROD POTTER
TAC CUP – Round 3
DANDENONG STINGRAYS v GEELONG FALCONS
COMPLETING a full 180 turnaround from last week’s horror TAC Cup season start, Dandenong overcame some first-quarter gremlins to comfortable knock off Geelong by 34 points.
With the ground abuzz – with full stands and car parks around Shepley Oval on Easter Saturday – all eyes were directed to a back-and-forth opening term that neither team really grasped with both hands.
The Stingrays’ errors from last week crept into the early parts of the match – switches across goal and turnovers resulting in goals – leaving the home side to catch up a 13-point deficit.
Lachie Batten left his man to set up a number of forward-50 entries for the Stingrays through the first half as the tempo shifted.
From the first change onwards, the match belonged to the Stingrays.
The defensive end abandoned its erroneous start and worked seamlessly to deny Geelong across the field. Daniel Capiron, Brandon White and Thomas Stoeffels repelled at all avenues and even without AFL Academy defensive duo Jacob Weitering and Keiran Collins, the Stingrays held strong throughout the back end.
Keeping Geelong to just one goal after half-time, to all but seize victory from the last line of defence, the romping triumph went from one end to the other as the Stingrays rapidly gained momentum through the midfield. Bailey Rice, who shrugged off a pretty significant hip injury to play, and Myles Poholke ran riot across the Shepley Oval centre to set up Harry Prior and Josh Battle – Dandy’s new tall timber.
Prior and Battle showed the Stingrays’ forward line is a Swiss army knife of possibilities with the duo pinch-hitting in the ruck for Jayden Bubb – who performed ably in only his second TAC Cup match – before heading forward to create aerial opportunity and set up the victory.
Capping off the victory, Cranbourne’s Zak Roscoe excelled in his first TAC Cup outing – booting the first two goals for Dandenong before slamming on another couple to finish with a big bag-of-four.
With Dandenong furiously moving the ball up field – taking only two or three kicks to get it end to end – the waywardness of its season opening loss at the hands of Gippsland had been forgotten, leaving only smiles in the coaches box for Dandenong’s Craig Black.
“We started really well and at quarter-time they were probably on top of us a little bit,” Black said.
“Then we really competed really hard, got our hands on the footy and moved it a lot quicker than we did last week and got some rewards for our effort up forward.
“Probably had 15 players that you could have tried to squeeze into the six (best on ground), which was really promising.”
All country teams head bush this week as Dandenong faces Bendigo Pioneers from 6pm at Queen Elizabeth Oval.
TAC CUP
DANDENONG STINGRAYS 2.3 7.5 10.9 12.12 (84)
GEELONG FALCONS 4.4 5.8 5.10 6.14 (50)
DANDENONG Goals: Z. Roscoe 4, T. Stoffels 2, M. Poholke 2, L. Dalmau, L. Williams, J. Di Pasquale, M. Cox. Best: D. Capiron, Z. Roscoe, B. White, B. Rice, M. Poholke, M. Cox.
GEELONG Goals: L. McCartney, S. Holroyd, L. Wagener, C. Farrell, Z. Zdybel, M. Patten. Best: T. Doedee, L. McCartney, J. Sheahan, S. Holroyd, C. Farrell, A. Witherden.
