Improved Giants fall short of premiership dream
GEELONG West coach Andrew Clark says his side will look into recruiting an additional ruckman and key forward ahead of next season.
While the GDFL’s most improved side looked lively early yesterday through goals to Curtis Young, Aaron O’Callaghan and Brayden Mitchell, Clark believes his team is two players off being where it wants to be.
“We’re certainly looking for another ruckman to help out Scott Jervies next year and maybe even another recruit or two,” Clark said last night.
Jervies was judged his side’s best player, capping off a year in which he also collected 15 Whitley Medal votes.
“Scott just keeps going and going each game,” Clark said.
“On a big ground like this, it is a massive effort when you’re getting tackled and thrown to the ground at his height.”
Steve Owen, O’Callaghan and Justin White were among the Giants’ best players yesterday.
O’Callaghan’s performance was particularly noteworthy, given he played with broken ribs and White battled through a shoulder injury.
“We can now tell you that Aaron actually played on with cracked ribs and he stood out as our four-quarter player,” Clark said.
“A lot of blokes wouldn’t have come back on after suffering a shoulder injury so early in the game but Justin insisted on coming back on.
“Had we won, it would have been an interesting week given neither he or Aaron would have been available to play Bell Post Hill.”
The Giants made history this year by ending a 21-year finals drought. But yesterday’s 25-point loss was a bitter pill to swallow for Clark.
“We thought we were really in the game and we spoke pregame about being mentally switched on for the whole four quarters,” he said.
“In that last 10 minutes of the third term we just fell away from our set up behind the footy and that really came back to hurt us.”