SUCCESSFUL LAST HIT OUT BEFORE THE REAL THING

The boys migrated south on Saturday afternoon to take on Belgrave in real ‘footy’ conditions. The idea was to trial a few different things and put into place the game plan we had been practicing all pre-season – but obviously, with only a week before the real stuff we were pretty focused on a win too.

Things didn’t get off to a great start; Belgrave had a lot more run and were dominating around the contested ball. By quarter time they were leading by about 4 goals and changes had to be made. New assistant coach Justin Whitcher spent the break re-jigging the kick-outs at both ends of the grounds with amazing effect. When the second quarter got under way we were instantly able to steady the flow of last year’s Yarra Valley grand finalists. The Hills started controlling the ball and moving it up the ground in the fashion Coach Ramsay has been drilling into us since January. Will Box dominated the term taking marks at will (so to speak) and the deficit at half time had been greatly reduced.

The second half was a different story altogether – the game plan really started to click and dominant performances by Daniel Pratt and Ben Strongman, well supported by Simon Gunn and Christian Cummings really swung the game in our favour. Christian was superb and provided much of the drive out of the back half with the added pressure of taking the kick-in’s. Amazingly, the defence only let through 3 goals after quarter time!

The Hill’s finished with plenty of run in the final quarter – a major from Adam Anderson put us in front and some inspirational stuff including a long bomb goal from Ricky Woods provided the 12 point victory and the perfect end to a great pre-season. The only negative was a hamstring injury to Pete Davey who had a great game up forward till that point.

Bring on the 2008 home-and-away season!

Panton Hill: 10 - 11 - 71
Belgrave: 8 - 11 - 59