Under 18s Report

South Adelaide vs Sturt
Round 17 - Hickinbotham Oval - 19/08/17

Goals: Steele 4, Wilkinson 3, Davies 2, McGree, Manuel, Sowter, Colwell
Best: Whitbread, Fitt, Sampson, Steele, Bogle, Douglass

South Adelaide's have secured an undefeated record at Hickinbotham Oval in 2017 thanks to a solid 20-point win over Sturt on Saturday afternoon.

Our Under-18s played finals-bound Sturt in what was our final home game for season 2017.

The end result was a solid 20-point win to ensure we remained undefeated at Hickinbotham Oval this year.

Both teams were certain of a place in the final four and desperate to take winning form into the final home and away round.

The game quickly became a transition game with both teams scoring from mid-forward turnovers.

The first quarter also had 14 free kicks paid with the vast majority of those awarded in tackles. To Sturt's credit, they were getting to the ball earlier than us and drawing high contact from our tackler. This was corrected by the players after quarter time.

The second quarter had both teams playing some fast footy with us scoring 3.1 to Sturt's 1.4.

At halftime our guys went in with a 15-point lead and identified some areas to focus on to try and keep the ball in our front half for longer periods.

With Sturt's midfield working to feed off our tap work at stoppage, their tall forwards started to look dangerous. Full credit to our backs for their contest work against taller opponents in the second half.

Sturt were very good in the second half and stayed in the game in all facets. They were able to score three goals in the last five minutes of the third quarter to keep them in the game.

Our guys really had to work hard to stay in front and did so to hang on to win by 20 points in the end.

We now play North Adelaide in the final minor round game at 10:30am in the first of four Under-18 games at Footy Park this Saturday.

Tony Bamford
Under 18s Coach

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