Proud Tigers block out noise pollution
GROVEDALE coach Craig McCaughan understands the external talk.
Preliminary finalists last year — their third crack at finals in four seasons — the Tigers were again expected to be a premiership contender in 2017.
Two rounds into the year, they had won both games (admittedly against St Albans and Lara) and sat on top of the ladder with a percentage of 404.91.
Since then, things have taken an unexpected turn for the worse, with Grovedale losing seven straight and slipping to ninth on the GFL table.
But despite all the noise in local football circles suggesting something must be wrong at Burdoo Resevre, somebody has clearly forgot to tell the players.
“After seven straight losses people would assume the boys are a bit flat and a bit down but, while it’s not the complete opposite, they are still very determined to finish off the year and start winning games of footy,” McCaughan said.
“They are a proud group and the boys are pretty determined to improve throughout the year. We have been disappointing in the last two months and we need to step it up and get some wins on the board.”
Three of the seven losses have been by less than two goals, and the average losing margin has been by 25 points, so it is a misconception that Grovedale is struggling to be competitive.
In fact its percentage of 101.1 is stronger than the three teams above it — none of whom they have had the chance to play despite taking on reigning premiers Leopold twice already.
McCaughan says it is difficult to pin down just one area of his team’s game that has caused it to drop off in the opening half of the season, although he knows his defenders have had a tough time stopping their opponents from scoring.
“It’s a number of things but our skill errors have hurt us and the way footy is played these days, which is very fast flowing, we press up and try not to turn the footy over but we do that too much and get opened up the other way,” he said.
“Our defenders don’t really have the chance to defend then because there is a lot of free ball coming in to the opposition forwards, and that is hard to stop.
“We rate our defenders pretty highly but we haven’t helped them out very much because of the skill errors made up the ground, which really hurts us.”
The numbers back up the former South Barwon premiership star’s words.
In 2016 Grovedale was conceding an average of 64.66 points per game in the homeand-away season — second only to eventual premier Leopold — but this year that figure has ballooned out to 86.5, nearly four goals more per match.
McCaughan is confident, however, that his men are capable of changing their fortunes around.
The off-season recruits the club acquired remain and while the Tigers are still a mathematical chance of playing finals, talk of September action is off the radar for now, with Grovedale’s focus squarely on Saturday’s clash with the improving North Shore.
“We’ve had games where we’ve been in positions to win and we just haven’t, and there have also been games that we haven’t been in positions to win,” McCaughan said.
“We aren’t shying away
“After seven straight losses people would assume the boys are a bit flat and a bit down but, while it’s not the complete opposite, they are still very determined to finish off the year and start winning games of footy.”
from the fact we’ve been really disappointing in a couple of those games and should have had opportunities to win but didn’t.
“So we’ve just got shortterm goals at the moment. Whether we got ahead of ourselves early on when we got a few good recruits, we’ve learned from our mistakes in that regard so we’ll take it week by week and make sure that we do everything we can this weekend to get the result against North Shore.
“They’re two games clear of us so it’s a huge test for us and we’ll do everything we can to get the four points and get our season back on track.”