Hoppers put their pedal to the metal in today’s games, but the Cockies are trying to keep up! Progress scores before tonight’s games: Hoppers 972/10/97.2 Cockies 757/8/ 94.3
OMG, McCluggage and Neale Added to Grundy, Dawson, Mills and Rankine, these Hoppers are hard to beat! Saturday night progress scores: Hoppers 1271/12/105.9 Cockies 819/9/91.0 Hoppers only have Saad, Zuthrie and Patty Cripps to play, and the Cockies have 6 more including Sweet, Darcy, Holmes, Farrell, Drew, & Byrnes. We’re gonna need all six to have big performances if we want to catch the Grasshoppers!
@snoz as a Pies supporter, it was probably bitter sweet seeing these guys cut apart the Pies tonight. I watched the game and they were so good, especially Bags!
Whoever said the importance of defense increases during the finals forgot to pass the message on to the Cradle Mountain Devils and Mount Beauty Uglies with both teams on 1,500+ pace at the start of time on in the second quarter of their ORFFA quarter final. An undermanned 14 player Mount Beauty outfit maintained a high standard of football for close to a half despite being a defender short. Nathan Broad was out of Mount Beauty’s team due to illness and defender emergency Jayden Hunt didn’t take the field. Throughout the first half Cradle Mountain at home utilised their numerical advantage by moving the ball quickly and stretching the Uglies defense by rotating one of the three CMD rucks deep in the forward line to great effect. With two minutes and 40 seconds left in the second quarter the Devils had opened up an 86 point lead, 841 to 755. The frenetic pace of the first half caught up with the undermanned Uglies with the Devils dominating either side of the main break to extend their lead to 277 points, 1,117 to 840 with seven minutes left in the third quarter. Progress score Cradle Mountain Devils1,276/12 Ave 106.3 lead @Bama’s Mount Beauty Uglies 840/10 Ave 84.0 More than half of the 22 players to take the field so far have registered tons with CMD leading this count 7-5 against MBU. Both teams best player has been a ruck who is a Les W Medal winner, the Devils English with a phenomenal 202 and the Uglies Gawn with 131. Devils to play on Sunday: J Steele, R Marshall & S Mannagh Uglies to play on Sunday: Z Butters, B Hill, C Zurhaar, H Young & O Hollands
Max Holmes putting in a massive effort to try to drag us back into this game. I hope he can keep it up for the 2nd half!
I hope the Nuffers have done enough. Birdsville 845/11 - Smith, Ryan, TDK and Lird to come Nuffers 1081/12 - Clark, Serong and Prancing Pony to come. Forwards have been sub par this week (210 from 3 so far) and got a 20 out of my ruck. But my bench of Keane and Redman played well, and my mids have been good. Let's see where the late games take us.
Serong and Voss putting in all-time dire first quarters. Yuck. Birdsville most definitely well in this.
Have only just had a chance to catch up on this arvos games now. It looks like @snoz has had a good win! 1555 to 1409 or thereabouts. Well done Snoz, you definitely deserved the win, and tbh Im stoked to have made the finals anyway. I feel like it is ahead of schedule, and somewhat undeserved with some other teams who missed out having scored a lot more points than me across the season. But Im happy with the team's progress, making the top-8 and scoring 1400+ in a final is a good effort for this young group - the 15 players to take the field this weekend had an average age of 24, so we definitely have some improvement left in us. And the selectors messed up this week with two of our emergencies scoring better than someone on their line. Im looking forward to hearing how the other finals played out. Good luck to everyone for the next couple weeks.
I think after a fair old scare late in the game, the Nuffers managed to get home - mainly thanks to Jordan Clark and a good last quarter from Caleb Serong. Bloody excellent comeback from Birdsville - Smith and Lord were huge in the late games. Barely topped 1300, which isn't going to cut it next week. Room for improvement though, especially forward. I'll pray for a miracle return from Daniels or JHF, but am likely to perhaps only be able to consider Butler or Amiss as inclusions. Onwards.
Scores are up. Feel sorry for @Jen ; second highest score (1214) in the coveted Zac Dawson Cup, and got knocked out.
wowee, three 1500+ scores... don't think I have seen that in an ORFFA round before. Iron knob, the only away team to win out of all 8 games Finals for this week, good luck to all particpants Big Dance: Charlies Opening Spelunkers vs Nareewillock Nuffers Gundagai Grasshoppers vs Cradle Mountain Devils The Zac: Wineglass Bay Packers vs Iron Knob Codpieces Junee Jaguars vs Waikickamoocow Incorrigibles If anyone else wants a scratch match let me know
Not sure how much of an actual scare was involved but congrats on the win, @chris88 . Good luck for the remainder of the finals. The Battlers continue to exist in mid-table purgatory - around the mark to make finals, but not really challenge. Let's see which way the offseason winds blow.