Under-18s Match Report

South Adelaide vs Sturt
Round 9 - Hickinbotham Oval - 09/06/18

Goals: Dumesny 5, Renney
Best: Dumesny, Douglass, Lippett, Davies, Marshman, Juckers

Our Under-18's were outclassed this weekend by a disciplined and well structured Sturt side.

We trained and spoke to players about our game plan and the way Sturt like to play short hit up uncontested football, but we were unable to stop them doing exactly that.

Ultimately, we fell to a 6.6 (42) to 14.8 (92) defeat on our home deck.

Before the game started we lost out lead ruckman Damon Freitag, who pulled out with a sore ankle.

The first quarter showed good signs of the team really playing our brand of football, but with a few missed opportunities going forward. We should have had the upper hand at quarter time.

The second quarter we let ourselves down with poor skills, accountability and turnovers, which Sturt made us pay for.

This was the way the rest of the game played out, with us never really getting our game together and unable to shut down Sturt's run and link up by foot and hand.

We have now played 42 of our 45 player squad due to injury, college or state and senior call ups, which we will be better for come the end of the season.

We had a few positives from the game, in particular first gamer Zac Dumesny, who kicked five of our six goals and presented well from full forward all day.

Aaron Douglass has really hit form down back and lead by example with the back line having a lot of work to do all game.

We are still holding onto second spot on the ladder at the halfway point of the season and we are confident we will regroup and get back to winning and playing our best footy again.

Next week we will have a few players returning from injury in our rematch with Sturt at Peter Motley Oval (11.00am, Saturday, June 16).

Matthew Austin
U18s Assistant Coach

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