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The Doggies sent a strong message to the rest of the competition, defeating ladder leaders Upper Swan in what was billed as the “Game of the Round”.
On a cold June Sunday, Upper Swan once again left their home and traveled to the Morley hub to confront a much improved Morley side, that was looking for redemption from the last embarrassing encounter between the two teams. The crowd built all morning to see the two top teams battle it out.
With all the pre-game routine and discussion out the way, The first bounce was highly anticipated. Morley cleared first with a couple of good attacks into their 50. Only to result in behinds as the opposition braced themselves for a tough day ahead. Julian Pinneri marked strongly and looked set for a bag, but strayed wide early. Returning from a long layoff, and on restricted minutes, Brandon Cappeau showed glimpses of his quality capping off with a goal. Upper Swan through their star Captain stayed in the hunt with clean play and 2 straight goals.
The 2nd term was a tight tussle, as Upper Swan steadied and showed why they are the competition leaders, often pushing forward through key players. But it was another standout display from Gianni Romeo and Zac Beros who kept the doggies in the game with their gut-running and link up play. Xander Jones and Seb Callisto dominated the midfield. Upper Swan missed opportunities in front of goal as both sides went without a major to the Halftime interval.
It was the 3rd quarter that Morley broke the shackles. Runners Jack Clohessy, Casey Harris, and Jonas Sim came alive. The Doggies forwards starting kicking goals. Hudson Chapman, Noah Ashton, Luca Naseri, Harry Sloss and Trell Morgan gave Morley plenty of options as Upper Swan started to buckle under the pressure.
The last quarter started well for the visitors. Striking a few early. But with each week the Morley defence stood firm. Ayden Colgan, Mitch Grigic-Jones, Cooper Rogers, Jack Monaghan, Seb Smith are creating quite a unit at the back end. Goals from Brandon Cappeau and Julian Pinneri’s 4 closed out any hope of a come from behind win from the visitors. If it were not for some brilliant contested marks by Bailey Harbour in the last, it might have been a different resultWell after packing our lunches and water bags and venturing out to Lesmurdie we got jumped a little by Mazenod in the first quarter and it was probably their inaccurate kicking that kept us in the game when we came in at the first quarter and the scores were 1.1 (7) to 2.4 (16). Arguably perhaps the lack of an area for a warm up meant that the first quarter was our warm up!
GOAL SCORERS: Pinneri (4), Cappeau (3), Morgan, Champan and Beros
BEST : Everyone
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