Lament over horrible use of ball by Lynch mob in off day
OCEAN Grove coach Paul Lynch has delivered a stinging assessment of the Grubbers’ skills, admitting he had never seen such “horrible” ball use from his side.
Lynch will look to rebuild his side’s confidence this week and work out how it went so wrong after being dismantled in the 27.16 (178) to 6.8 (44) loss.
“Our ball use was just horrible. I’ve never seen us kick the footy as bad at any game we’ve played this year,” Lynch said.
“We just couldn’t hit a target from 10 metres away and you can’t afford to give the ball back to sides like Torquay because they’re so elite by foot.
“Anything that possibly could have gone wrong went wrong . . . they won the whole 22 positions.
“I obviously rate Torquay as a benchmark . . . I thought their ball movement was outstanding for a Bellarine side.
“We were trying to make it a bit more congested around the footy because they murdered us around the footy last time.”
Lynch said his players knew the challenge that confronted them but could not execute.
“Blokes like (James) Darke and that were first into the footy and we didn’t want that to happen,” Lynch said.
“I think when Darke had the ball a lot of times it was very good. They’ve got players around the footy that are very good — (Dom) Gleeson and Darke are probably the best in the business.”
Daniel Maloney slotted two goals for the Grubbers while Brent Macleod, Patrick Maloney, Tom and Rhys Hobbs, and Jake Carmody claimed a single major each.
In-form Ocean Grove veteran Kaiden Long once again stood out as his side’s best, accompanied by Maloney and Macleod who both had strong games, but there was not enough support.
“We’ve just got to make sure we do recover well and work out what went wrong and why it was so bad,” Lynch said.
“Everyone has an off day in football, I understand that, and it’s not a perfect world.
“We’ve got to make sure that’s our last off day for a very long time.”