St Albans has proved its best football can trouble even the premiership contenders in division 1 of the Western Region Football League.
The trouble is that the second-last Saints haven’t been able to put it together over four quarters too often this season.
A third-quarter dip on Saturday saw the Saints go down to ladder-leader Hoppers Crossing by 12 points at Kings Park Reserve.
The best sides in an enthrallingly close competition are the ones who limit their bad quarters.
But, for one reason or another, the Saints have too many of those off-colour 30-minute blocks.
“We’ve been competitive but we just haven’t been quite able to get the job done so far and that’s the frustrating part of it,” Saints coach Fab Carelli told Star Weekly.
“We just haven’t been putting together consistent four-quarter performances.
“Even against Deer Park, we were six points up at the 12-minute mark [of the last quarter] and ended up losing by 20.
“We’re just not quite there.”
But there have been forces out of St Albans’ control and the Saints have had players missing for myriad reasons that cannot be controlled in a local football environment.
“We’ve had to change our side almost every week … for an injury, weddings or blokes going on holidays,” Carelli said.
“It’s stuff that happens frequently at this level but you can’t control it as coach.
“That’s probably led to the types of performances we’ve had.”
So it leaves St Albans a long way off the pace, much closer to the cellar than the summit, 10 weeks into an 18-round season.
But Carelli is confident the second half of the season will be richer than the first for his side if he can get continuity.
“We’ve let a couple of games slip but I’m hoping we’ll address that at the back end of the year,” he said.
St Albans has received superb output from their top-end players.
Jarrod Tuppen was described as a “warrior” for his tireless work one-out in the ruck and Tim Jenkins has enjoyed another stellar year.
Mitch Bongiovanni continues to impress across half back and in midfield, while Michael Spooner is locked in a battle with Deer Park’s Jase Perkins for leading goalkicker in the competition.
St Albans will travel to Spotswood on Saturday.
