Joeys’ coach rattled by surprise defeat
ST JOSEPH’S coach Heath Jamieson admits his side was “taught an old-fashioned footy lesson” by a rampant Leopold outfit on Saturday.
The two-time premiership coach has forecast changes to his side next week to make amends for the shock 16.10 (106) to 7.6 (48) defeat.
The loss is Joeys’ first in a home-and-away season since Round 9, 2016, when ironically Leopold had the better of them again.
“It’s not necessarily losing — we don’t feel like we’re bulletproof — but it’s the way we lose,” Jamieson said postmatch.
“If you look at the semifinal last year (against St Mary’s), we lost by 12 goals and today we lose by 11 goals.
“To me, that’s just not good enough. We shouldn’t be going from winning a streak of games to losing by 11 goals to anyone. There’s an effort and commitment issue today.”
Jamieson added that the performance would not be accepted at the selection table.
“We’ll have to make changes, for sure,” he said.
“There will be players that played today that won’t be selected next week. We can’t carry players through.
“We got taught an oldfashioned footy lesson.”
The reigning premiers were forced into uncharacteristic mistakes by a dominant Leopold side. They were unable to counter Leopold’s slick ball movement and were never in the contest after quarter- time, when they trailed by less than a goal. The remaining three quarters were a shock to the system.
“I said to the boys that when you continue to win, it might hide a few deficiencies that we’ve got, so I suppose losing a game highlights all of those,” Jamieson said.
“We’ll look at the video and hopefully we can work on those deficiencies.
“But we walk away knowing we’ve got a ton of work to do to bridge the gap that Leopold have got now.”