Tara Murray
Keilor Park continues to show it won’t be easy beats this Essendon District Football League division 1 season.
While coach Paul Guicas floated the possibility of playing finals earlier this year, most people had the side among the relegation mix.
The Devils though have won four matches so far, while they faced bottom side Glenroy on Saturday after deadline, to have played everyone once.
Guicas said they were definitely happy with the season so far.
“We knew we had a tough period of three games against West Coburg, St Albans and Deer Park with being a young side.
“We’ve had 16 players under the age of 23 and our average losing margin was 39 points and we didn’t get blown away.
“I’m really proud of the boys. It’s been one quarter in each game that has cost us. Against West Coburg we were 10 points down at the beginning of the last quarter before we made some silly mistakes.”
With the side having four wins on the board, finals still remains a possibility even if they need a bit of luck to go their way.
Guicas said they needed to beat Glenroy and go from there.
He got his wish, with the side winning 8.11 (59)-6.7 (43).
The win puts them four games ahead of Glenroy and three games ahead of the second last and the relegation battle.
“Four games clear of last would be good, you never know what can happen,” Guicas said.
“We win this week and we’ve played everyone once and be 5-6 we would be pretty happy.
“We win this week and could be one game outside the top five if other results go our way.
“We want to win this week and take it one week at a time.”
Guicas said they had a reasonable run home with only a second match against West Coburg and not Deer Park and St Albans.
He said they also had a number of matches at home that they want to capitalise on.
Now nearly have played everyone once, Guicas said for them the biggest thing was proving that they weren’t going to be easy beats this season.
“A lot of people were thinking that we were going to be easy beats and it’s only natural,” he said.
“We hated hearing that and we wanted to play as hard as we can to make an impact on finals.”
Guicas said they were only going to get better the second half of the season.
Captain Daylan Kempster has played just two games so far.
“He is arguably our best player and we’re winning without him,” he said.
“We’re still young and going to make mistakes. As long as we work hard and play good defence we will always be in the game.
“It’s not going to be easy but we’re really happy with where things are at, at the moment.”
Guicas said before the Glenroy game they were expecting a challenge and with rain possibly predicted would make it harder.
