South Adelaide @ West Adelaide
Round 17 - Hisense Stadium - 06/08/2022

Goals: Heaslip, Sampson 2, Haines, Kraemer, Shillabeer, Wilkinson
Best: Haines, Brooksby, Broadbent, Sampson, Garthwaite
Crowd: 1,055

The siren sounds on South Adelaide’s season with a bitter 5-point loss to West Adelaide at Hisense Stadium on Saturday.

It was not a game for the ages: lack of composure and costly turnovers on both sides formed the catalyst that ended the Panthers’ dream of making the finals for the third consecutive season. 

The 8.15 (63) to 10.8 (68) loss was a chaotic game where – even when the Panthers held a healthy lead – they never seemed to be truly in control. This was shown when the Bloods’ stormed home in the final term to dimmish any chance of making finals.

But despite this; there were some Panthers that stood out in the do-or-die clash.

Keegan Brooksby (32 hit-outs, 24 disposals) and Matthew Broadbent (28 disposals, 5 marks) played their heart outs during the tough-to-swallow loss.

Joe Haines (28 disposals, 1 goal) and Hayden Sampson (15 disposals, 2 goals) were also lively throughout the day.

But it just seemed to be one of those games. Frustrating at times, promising at others.

The Panthers struggled to finish off their work up forward or they had one costly fumble that broke down an impressive piece of play.

After the tunnelling of Damon Freitag in the goal square, and border-line sling on Mitch O’Neill went uncalled – it had the Panther faithful pulling their hair out.

With neither team gaining any ascendency in the second term, the again in-accurate Panthers trailed by 2 points at the main break. 

However, the Panthers made their move in the third with some blistering ball movement, that set up another Joey Haines bomb to give the Panthers some breathing room. 

Moments later, some cheeky work form Eamon Wilkinson gave Panthers back to back goals for the first time in the game, after he picked Jordon Boyle's pocket and ran about 90m to send it through the big sticks. 

Ben Shillabeer would kick his first League goal when he soccered the ball through after it when over the back of a pack thanks to a deep entry from Freitag. 

The game was looking like it was heading the Panthers way after a Nic Kraemer goal stretched the lead to 26-points early in the final term. 

However, the Bloods would respond a few minutes later thanks to Josh Gore to bring the margin back to 20. 

Costly misses and poor decisions by the Panthers would let the Bloods storm back into the game and would ultimately pinch the points, 8.15 (63) to 10.8 (68).

The Panthers will look to gain some momentum heading into 2023 by knocking off their century-old rival Port Adelaide at Flinders University Stadium on Sunday, 14 August, from 1:35pm.