Under 18s Report: Round 18 - South Adelaide vs Eagles
Under-18s Match Report
South Adelaide vs Eagles
Round 18 - Maughan Thiem Hyundai Oval - 25/08/18
| South Adelaide | 4.0 | 5.2 | 7.5 | 10.10 | 70 |
| Eagles | 2.2 | 9.4 | 11.8 | 14.10 | 94 |
Goals: Sladojevic 3, Freitag, Dumesny 2, Marshman, Coleman, Spicer
Best: Sladojevic, Juckers, Clifton, Tarca, Wade, Colwell
Our Under-18s closed out the minor rounds with a 10.10 (70) to 14.10 (94) loss against the Eagles on Saturday afternoon.
This week we played the Eagles In our last minor round game for the year.
The Eagles had locked in top spot and we had secured second, so it was a dead rubber of sorts.
That said, we still wanted to have a good performance to get some confidence going into the first week of finals.
We started well and two of our big forwards, Daniel Sladojevic and Damon Freitag kicked two goals each. Most of the stats were even and we went into the first change ten points up feeling good about the day.
The second quarter was a disaster, or at least the first 12 minutes were.
The Eagles kicked seven goals before we really touched the ball. They are a good side and came out firing, which we should have expected, but it seemed like we were in shock.
The second half of the quarter the stats were even. We were able to kick a goal late to go in at halftime 26 points down.
After halftime we made some positional changes with Jake Tarca going into the midfield, which made an impact.
Our tackle pressure increased and we started to get more of the ball. The rest of the stats were even, but we didn't make up any ground on the scoreboard going into the last change 26 points down.
In the last quarter we challenged the players to see who would stand up and got a response from Billy Wade, Luke Bogle and Tate Coleman. We managed to kick 3.5 and if we had kicked straight may have been in with a chance, but it wasn't to be.
This week highlighted that we need to be able to play a full four quarters against the good teams or we will fall short. This is something we will have to address next week as we start our finals campaign.
Our first finals contest will be a rematch with the Eagles back at Maughan Thiem Hyundai Oval. First bounce is 1.15pm, Saturday September 1.
Mark Clayton
U18s Coach
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