More Dragon agony as final hoodoo lingers
A LONG summer of soul searching is ahead for Bell Park after exiting the finals without a win for the second consecutive year.
The loss to Grovedale yesterday means the Dragons have lost all three finals they have played in the past two seasons.
With almost half the side returning after sitting out the final- round match, Bell Park failed to turn up, with a slow start costing them dearly, just like in last year’s finals.
“We prepared for it and had the same thing happen for us last year. We knew what was at stake but unfortunately our levels in the first half didn’t match the stakes and from that point we were chasing,” co-coach Ben Armstrong said.
“That’s footy and we’ve got to live with the fact that we’ve played three finals in two years and lost them all when we had a relatively good shot at them.”
In both finals last year, Bell Park trailed comfortably at the first break and found themselves down by 19 points at quarter time yesterday.
While Charlie Farrell, Luke Rounds and Tim Sheringham lifted in the second half and the Dragons came to life, they were too far back to steal a win.
The struggle began in the middle, according to Armstrong, with centre clearances clearly being dominated by Grovedale early on.
“All the spoils go to them, they were harder and cleaner and they wanted it more and we thought we’d come back into it but it was a super disappointing first half,” he said. “You try and change your mix, you try and look after the guys who are really hurting you, but our stoppage numbers were way down so we were losing them back at the source and we weren’t able to control them.”