THE Mallee Eagles have kicked off 2022 in the best possible fashion, with an 87-point thrashing of a lacklustre Koondrook-Barham on Saturday.
The Eagles dominated from start to finish, keeping the River Raiders goalless for the first three quarters to run out dominant 16.13.109 to 3.4.22 winners.
In his first game in charge, Mallee coach Brent Sheahan couldn’t have been more pleased with the result, telling The Guardian it was the perfect way to open their account after a long pre-season.
“We played a pretty exciting brand of footy – our ball movement off half-back was exactly where we wanted it to be,” Sheahan said.
“We got on top through the midfield pretty early on, which was good, because it’s something we’ve been working pretty hard on – and combined with our attack off half-back, it enabled us to get some really good clean forward entries and give our forwards a pretty good look at it.”
One of those forwards was Sam Dunstan, who dominated up forward in his first game for his new club, booting six goals and creating a strong marking target for his midfielders.
Reagan Hamilton had the job on Dunstan – and despite the power forward kicking six majors, Hamilton stuck to his task well.
Clinton Cummins was another Eagle who had a day out, playing the role intercept defender across half-back and using his ability to run and link up to perfection.
Angus McKenzie returned for his first game back in Eagles colours and showed he would be one of the competition’s premier ruckman this season, giving Harry Allen, Darcy McGregor and Beau Bennett an armchair ride around the stoppages.
With the ball spending the majority of the day in their defensive half of the ground, it was no surprise that most of Koondrook-Barham’s better players were defenders.
Centre half-back Max Baldissera performed well, along with Hamilton, while young defender Rylan Attwell showed that the future is bright for the Raiders, having a breakout game in the back pocket.
Col McVeigh was another shining light for the home side, playing in multiple positions to try and get something happening before settling behind the ball and playing in defence.
Coming off a disappointing season last year, the Koondrook-Barham faithful would have been hoping for a much better performance.
New coach Aaron Collins was unable to hide his post-match frustration.
“It definitely wasn’t the result we were after and it certainly wasn’t the result we were expecting, that’s for sure,” Collins said.
“We’ve got a lot of things to work on and both our connection and execution are probably at the top of the tree in that regard – there’s no excuses for what we dished up and it’s certainly not the brand of football we want to be playing.”
The Mallee Eagles will return home to face Swan Hill this weekend, while the Raiders will have to regroup and face a resurgent Lake Boga fresh off their first round 1 victory for 12 years.
Collins said there were plenty of positives still ahead for the Raiders.
“The only way is up from here and that’s exactly what we took out of it in the end – we’ll just push forward, put yesterday behind us and move on as a group,” Collins said.
“We want to build a really strong culture and a strong work ethic – so we’ll just go back to the drawing board, keep on working and keep encouraging the boys and go from there.”
VOTES
3 – Clinton Cummins (Mallee Eagles)
2 – Harry Allen (Mallee Eagles)
1 – Sam Dunstan (Mallee Eagles)
