A long week

Devon Meadows’ Brett Armitage weaves through traffic during his side’s victory over Hampton Park on Saturday. Picture courtesy Scott Memery

By Brad Kingsbury
DEVON Meadows proved that a week really is a long time in football by staging a form reversal to lead all day against Hampton Park and win Saturday’s rugged encounter at the Booth Reserve by a comfortable 28 points.
The Panthers effort was made even more exceptional by the fact that only 22 players from a list of more than 50 trained on the Tuesday night prior to the game after a bout of flu went through the club.
Coach Steve O’Brien was among those missing and said the week had been a real battle.
“There were still a lot of blokes sick on Thursday and I wasn’t sure how we would come up this week. The way the boys played was a real credit to them after such a tough week,” he said. Hampton Park started the game as warm favourites, but it was the Panthers who took the early initiative and maintained forward pressure to kick three opening-term goals and keep the Redbacks goalless.
Hampton Park came out hard in the second term with Glen Rees and Nathan Dawes creating plenty of drive across the centre, but it took until the 14-minute mark of the second term before the first Redback major was kicked and the half-time deficit of seven points was as close as the home side got all day. The Panthers started their two marquee players, Aaron Henneman and Daniel Rigg, in defence with good effect and O’Brien said that changes were required after the side’s indifferent recent form.
“We needed to try something different and we hadn’t been kicking big scores, so we put Henno back on (Kevin) McLean and Rigg on (Matt) Shorey. It worked well and both had good games,” he said.
Devon Meadows lifted its work rate another notch after the long break and piled on five unanswered goals in the third quarter to take a stranglehold on the game.
Lucas Hoogenboom took over in the air, while super talented youngster Steve McInnes, along with Russell White and Damien Hinkley, showed their opponents a clean pair of heels as they ran the ball forward.
Hampton Park coach Josh Taylor tried a number of moves, but did not have enough manpower to cover all the gaps.
Dean Jamieson and Matt Dixon were among the home side’s better players, while defenders Scott Eastwood and Ryan Simpson also battled the game out, however it was the Panthers day and O’Brien was a happy coach afterwards.
“It’s probably how we have played all year and I think we can say now that the week before was an aberration,” he said.
“We toyed with the idea of loading up the forward half after half-time, but what we were doing was working so we left it and once we got a bit of scoreboard pressure on we blew it out to six goals and that was pretty pleasing.
“There were a few people around who might have been expecting the wheels to fall right off, but once I saw the boys before the game I knew we were going to put in a good showing. That was the most pleasing part of the game.”