Norwood have missed a golden opportunity to cement a place in the top five and more importantly defeat a premiership contender by giving up a 23 point half time lead at Unley Oval on Sunday.

Aaron Kite was a late withdrawal from the named side with back soreness and was replaced by Ed McDonnell, Heath Culpitt (100th SANFL game), Josh Donohue and Luke Nitschke were the other inclusions for Bryce Campbell, Nick Lower and Nick Duigan.

The Redlegs were in control for much of the first half, winning the 50-50 contests around the stoppages, pressuring the Double Blues into uncharacteristic errors and moving the ball quickly to Taylor Walker and Jamie Vlatko who had seven between them by the main break. Brett Zorzi and Stuart Bown were having the better of forwards Brant Chambers and Ian Perrie while Matthew Dawes was minimising Jade Sheedy's influence on the game.

The players message to themselves at half time was a simple one … reset and start the second half with the same approach as the first half. The Double Blues however are a well drilled, well organised and skilful outfit and after half time they started to get there game into gear, all well aware that the Double Blues would respond. Daniel Wicks, Adam Thomson, Ben Nelson, Mitchell Farmer and Greg Bentley started to get more of the ball around stoppages and began to find space and deliver the ball to their forwards with more system and accuracy. Brant Chambers who was held goalless in the first half then came into the game, leading with purpose from the goal square, marking strongly and kicking accurately. The home side dominated the scoreboard in the premiership quarter booting 6 goals to 1 and turning a 23 point deficit into a 10 point advantage at the last change and now had the game momentum.

Sturt continued to apply the pressure in the last quarter, it was the Redlegs who then started to make skill and decision errors as a result, 11 scoring short to 4 in the last quarter (32 to 20 for the game) and a 17 point margin at the final siren and once again left the Redlegs lamenting our inability to put together 4 quarters of quality football against a top 3 side.

There were plenty of best players in the first half, not so many in the second when the home side had 22 shots on goal to just 7. Over the full duration of the game however James Gallagher was our most consistent contributor, playing through the midfield, his work-rate exceptional. Jade Sheedy usually hurts Norwood with every possession, Matthew Dawes severely restricted his influence on the game with a disciplined and hardworking effort. The same words could be used to describe Tim Weatherald efforts in his first outing against his old club and Matthew Davis's rebound, execution and courageous attacks in 50-50 contests from half-back. Matt Thomas has earned himself a reputation across the land for being uncompromising in his attack on ball and body, this was a significant reason for us taking control of the game from the first siren, several bruising tackles, hard running and good execution of skills may just see him wearing his other guernsey next week.

The Reserves side had a day they would rather forget, Duane Stewart making 8 changes from last weeks side and four from our Under 19's teams getting their first opportunity at Reserves level. Significantly in a game lost by 103 points two of the teams better players, Trevor Baust and Craig Holm were playing their second and first games respectively. Ben Speight was the teams only multiple goal scorers with two while Craig's older brother Ryan never gave up trying and was the teams best over 4 quarters.

Despite losing 4 of their most consistent players to the Reserves team including their captain and vice-captain our Under 19's showed they have plenty of depth with a 104 point win at Coopers Stadium, Josh Benbow and Simon Muster (son of former player Ivan) both bagging 6 goals in a complete team performance. The same unfortunately could not be said for our Under 17's who were completely outclassed to the tune of 149 points and managing just 2 goals for the game.

Two significant and yet contrasting points will be taken from this game. The first and positive one is that we again proved our best (including our game style and structure) is good enough to match any side in the competition, the negative off-course is our continued inability to put together 4 quarters of quality football against competition leaders. No doubt the second will be the focus for the next two weeks until our next game.

David J Bean
League Team Manager