Bendigo Downed By North Ballarat
VFL ROUND 2
North Ballarat 4.4 7.5 12.10 16.16 (112)
Bendigo Bombers 2.1 5.2 7.3 9.6 (60)
GOALS:
North Ballarat: Spolding 4 Stephenson 2 McMahon 2 Smith Sewell Lower Smith Garlett Feery Grima Roach
Bendigo Bombers: Daniher 3 Hartigan 2 Crameri Atkinson Johnson Dick
BEST:
North Ballarat: Urquhart Spolding Goodes Searl Stephenson Smith
Bendigo Bombers: Flaherty Holmes Chartres Crameri Hooker Williams
David J Richardson reports
For those not there (99.9% of you), it wasn’t that bad, though when I go through looking for good players it’s not a long list. Basically, Nth Ballarat had a forward line, and we didn’t. Apart from the first and last fifteen minutes, we probably had more of the ball, but had no idea going forward.
Bendigo were very much into rotation of the bench today. The first quarter had about 25 changes, and it didn’t slow too much from there. At one stage, Tayte Pears was asked who he was on, and his response was a frustrated “How would you farking know?”. Hickmott had to address the issue to all at the quarter time huddle, saying he knew it was confusing but they’d get used to it, and had to communicate with their team mates better.
(Tayte has a point. Interesting to see some coaches admitting in the past week they have no idea who’s on who anymore. Maybe that’s why Roos doesn’t mind coaching from the bench. Several times the bench staff were clearly confused about who was where, and who was due to come on/off.)
As noted elsewhere, Johns did not play.
Below, all Essendon players and the better Bendigo ones:
Neagle — forward, rotated with Daniher and Lee; did very little
Skipworth — got better as the game progressed, but hardly great
Bowe — one of the better Bendigo-listed guys
Hartigan — ditto
JJ — got stacks of it. In the best.
Pears — only had a couple touches. His body and reflexes are clearly ahead of the pack, though.
Flaherty & Crameri — very solid
Hooker — very little to report
Daniher — kicked 3. Second came from a sweet blind turn. Anthony was happy with it while kicking the footy around on the ground at half-time. I was very happy with his work today, especially given it was his first game.
Lee — did bugger-all, except for his left shoulder…
Magin — wearing Jay Nash paint? I barely recall.
Atkinson — was the dominant player off half-back in the first half, then did nothing in the second half. suspect he had an injury niggle.
Dick — took a few handy marks up forward early
Chartres — in defence. OK.
Bellchambers — damn he’s big. held his own in the ruck. at times, Chartres and Dick took the bounce to let him rest.
Holmes — surprise packet. think young Mark Johnson. keep an eye on this one.
Basically, no one really said “Pick me!” to the Essendon selectors…
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