Gallant Tigers charge home
EIGHT debutants, a new game plan and a four-point loss.
It was a distinctively different Werribee in its first VFL outing of the season, but the grit and determination synonymous with the Tigers remained on show in the narrow defeat to Geelong on Sunday.
“Certainly Geelong deserved to win, but had we been able to prevail, it would’ve been a great win from our guys after turning it around from quarter-time,” Lamont said.
“They were easily the better team early in the game. We didn’t defend well enough, they controlled the tempo of the game and they were more professional in front of goal.
“To get as close as we got and to almost win was very pleasing.”
Trailing by 23 points at quarter-time, 13 points at the main break and 17 points at the last change, Werribee charged home to almost pull off a major upset.
“With five minutes to go we were nine points in front,” Lamont said.
“Then Wylie Buzza has taken a massive mark late and gone back and kicked truly and then it was a series of errors from our boys.
“We had a centre-square infringement, dropped a chest mark and made a bad mistake at a stoppage and Geelong capitalised and kicked three goals in 2 ½ minutes.”
It was a gallant effort against the Cats, a side that hammered the Tigers by 67 points just a fortnight ago.
“They gave us a nice old touch-up,” Lamont admitted.
“I could see our blokes were trying, but things just weren’t happening.”
As Werribee bids to re-create its own identity as a standalone club — having broken away from North Melbourne after a 10-year alignment — Lamont has rebuilt the list and remodelled the game style.
The fourth-year coach lured back a host of former Tigers and cherrypicked the top-end talent in the GFL to cover the loss of AFL-listed who ordinarily would filter down to VFL.
A huge influx of players resulted in great uncertainty for Werribee this season, but Sunday’s performance has giving Lamont heart that his side is tracking in the right direction.
Nick Coughlan, Sam Collins, Jack Henderson, Kye Declase, Jack Berry, Nick Nott, Brenton Rees and Andrew Hooper all debuted for the Tigers on Easter Sunday, while Ben Moloney and Josh Porter were back in yellow and black.
“We had a good number of returning players, but not a lot of them had played a lot of VFL footy,” Lamont said.
“The turnover for our club is normally pretty high, particularly when we were fully aligned, and there were a lack of opportunities because blokes were putting in a lot of time and not getting much of a look at it ... but we’ve backed our players that have been around for three or four to establish themselves as good VFL players.”