Patient Swans take chance

SOUTH Barwon is confident it is “peaking” at the business end of the season after yesterday’s strong elimination final win over Leopold.

The Swans collected a comfortable 10-goal win over a depleted Lions, who were missing five players from their starting team due to commitments with the Geelong Cougars’ VNL squads.

South progressed to the semi-finals without star shooter Ruby Horton.

With St Mary’s losing to St Albans in Saturday’s qualifying final, the Swans will now step up to the plate in a cutthroat semi-final.

South co-coaches Stacey Dodds and Ainslie Corrigan said the group was confident heading into the clash with the Saints.

“We only played them once in the year and it was closer to the start of the year,” Dodds said.

“We’ve come a long way, we’re a better team now, and we’re peaking at the right time.

“We’re excited about taking them on. It’s good timing for us. We’ve got nothing to lose and we match up well against them.”

A tight tussle in the first half, South Barwon broke away in the third term to win 48-38.

“There was a chance for them to level the scores and the siren went and we thought, ‘good, we need that break to find a bit of composure’,” Dodds said.

“We came together and gave the girls some instructions and they took them on and we built from there.

“We spoke about being patient, and when the girls were patient, they made the most of their chances.

“We were getting so many turnovers and we weren’t scoring off them, so we just needed to control the ball and treasure it, and they did that in the third and fourth quarters.”

Corrigan said she was pleased with the performance of her team after halftime.

“We’ve had lots of experience in finals and we said to the girls, ‘this is it, we don’t want to be out’. We said, ‘ you’ve got half an hour to work hard and we can have a run at the rest of the finals campaign’,” Corrigan said.

Lions coach Kirsty Heazle- wood described the performance of her players as brave, considering they were missing Zanna Woods, Genevieve O’Connor, Jaime Van Leerdam and Bridgette Furphy.

“We had five of our starting A grade side missing, but that’s why we have a squad, we push hard and we work together, and the B grade girls were part of the A grade team today, so I’m proud,” Heazlewood said.

“They stepped up and played well.”