Defeat’s bitter pill proof of new belief

THE mood in the Geelong West rooms said it all.

Near enough is no longer good enough.

The Giants pushed powerhouse Bell Post Hill to the end on Saturday, leading at threequarter time before going down by four points.

Years ago that would have been seen as a positive result for a club that has struggled to crack into the GDFL’s top five. But no more. “I said to them that we’ve come a long way in two years and we’ve got to make sure we don’t accept defeat any more. We go out there every week thinking we can win,” Giants coach Andrew Clark said.

“We’ve got to make sure games like that actually hurt. You don’t want to feel that in close games any more.

“As a group, we’ve come to terms now that close enough isn’t good enough. We’ve come a long way and we played well but unfortunately we don’t get the four points.”

The Giants managed to keep Bell Post Hill goalless in the third quarter, kicking four to take a nine-point advantage into the final term.

But the experienced Panthers forced their way back into the game, making the most of a couple of mistakes from Geelong West to put their nose in front.

“We gave ourselves a really good chance and we were there until the end,” Clark said.

“They were kicking with the scoring end (in the last quarter). Probably a few inexperienced things we did in the last quarter, maybe the pressure got to a couple of blokes.

“We coughed the ball up a couple of times in the last four or five minutes where we should have been more composed and taken our time.

“But they were really good and kept coming at us all day.”

Clark praised the effort of Tom McKay, while Curtis Young also led the way in slippery conditions.

“It was amazing to watch Tom considering how wet it was,” Clark said.

“It was like a dry day the way he was handling it.”