By Holly McGuinness
Keilor’s season has come to an end after losing to Pascoe Vale in its Essendon District Football League premier division semi-final on Sunday.
Keilor coach Mick McGuane said a lot of what cost them the victory was fixable.
“We dominated in the first quarter, but didn’t get as much ascendancy as we would have liked on the scoreboard,” he said
“If only we just had another week next week to address those issues, but we don’t.”
After a confident start the Blues fell behind in the second quarter as they struggled to convert from inside the 50 metre mark.
This gave the Panthers the upper hand they needed to gain an advantage in the second quarter, making Keilor’s strong comeback in the final quarter inadequate to get the conversions they needed to turn the game around.
The Panthers won the game 10.13 (73)- 7.14 (56).
“There’s a lot of mechanics of the game that we just couldn’t master this time, which had a lot to do with our inside 50 efficiency,” McGuane said
It’s been a hard year for the Blues with the team losing some key players due to injury across the season. McGuane said they particularly missed midfielders, Kane Barbuto and Brett Stillman who have left the team.
Todd Stephenson, Nick O’Kearney and Darcy Cassar were stand out players for this game though.
McGuane said Stephenson was a key contributor around the ball this game, O’Kearney also had a lot of ball time and a great year overall and Cassar being one of the team’s younger players showed his “will and want” for the ball.
“They gave everything they got but we just had to tidy up some of the machinations of the game which once again was our ball use,” McGuane said.
Missing on the field was James Bailey who fell ill the day prior. The team filled the gaps from missing senior players with younger players , giving them the opportunity to take up this level of the game.
“We had some really key personnel down from what we would like and we had some players going into that game under done,” McGuane said.
Preparations for next season will be under way as the players have a break and management reviews the weekend’s game they’ll look for holes that can be patched for next year’s team.
“We’ll see if there’s a possibility to recruit … We tend to go to our own well first because we’ve got a great nursery at the Keilor footy club, but if we need a bit of icing or cream on top then we’ll go outside of those walls,” McGuane said
Hoping to keep on most players from this year’s pool players will continue to be around the club supporting the women’s league and reserves team during the break.
