AN eight-goal-to-one first quarter in Saturday’s preliminary final has kept Marong’s hopes of a three-peat alive, with the Panthers now locked into a mouth-watering grand final against Pyramid Hill this Saturday.
The reigning premiers dominated their contest with Bridgewater from start to finish, turning a 45-point quarter-time lead into an 85-point victory.
After two knockout finals, the Mean Machine ran out of legs, succumbing to Marong 21.14 (140) to 8.7 (55).
The only negative for the minor premiers in their 85-point win was a calf injury to midfielder Corey Gregg.
Marong coach Linton Jacobs told The Guardian he would give his gun onballer every chance to play.
“He will be a wait and see unfortunately,” Jacobs said.
“He’s one of our leaders and we will give him every chance to get himself right.”
It was a win set up in the opening quarter, when the Panthers effectively ended the contest.
Jacobs was enthused by his team’s response to their 13-point defeat to the Bulldogs seven days earlier.
“I didn’t think we played badly last week (against Pyramid Hill), we owned big chunks of the game but things just didn’t go our way,” Jacobs said.
“We responded really well, our pressure was up early and we got our running game going and our ball movement was really slick.
“We put some real pressure on Bridgewater and that set up the game.
“Our pressure was good early on and we were able to get the ball on the outside and surge it forward.
“We were a bit more efficient in front of goal, and when you have momentum and you make the most of it, it puts scoreboard pressure on the opposition.
“Our defensive stuff was really good, the pressure on the ball gave us opportunities to set up behind the footy, which maybe at times we didn’t do too well the week before in the second half.
“We played a bit more of a Marong brand of footy, which was what we spoke about during the week in terms of getting back to our DNA and playing our style.”
While Marong finished with 13 individual goalkickers, it was the performance of young defenders Jai Gretgrix and Brodie Hartland that had the game played in the Panthers’ favour, with Gretgrix keeping Andrew Collins goalless and Hartland restricting league leading goalkicker Lachlan Sharp to just one goal.
Both players earned praise from Jacobs, along with his unrelenting fleet of midfielders, with the Marong coach hopeful of his team repeating their performance this Saturday.
“Jimmy Gadsden had a huge game, he won heaps of the footy and drove us forward out of contest and his tackling was unbelievable for the littlest man on the ground,” Jacobs said.
“Lachie Lee, Jack McCaig and Noah McCaig were great, Noah had a super first half, he got us going early when the heat was on up forward and was really dangerous.
“It was the same with a couple of the older guys like (Matthew) Riordan, (Matthew) Willox and (Michael) Bradbury in the ruck, we had a good even spread.”
The Mean Machine were well served by Lee Coghlan, who kicked three goals, with Jack Neylon, Joseph Mayes, Harry Conway and Darcy Wood also among their team’s better players.
For Jacobs and Marong, attention now quickly turns to this Saturday’s grand final, where a rematch with the only club to have beaten them over the past season awaits.
“We know what’s in front of us and we’ve been training since November to get this opportunity again,” Jacobs said.
“It felt like a little bit of a weight was lifted off our shoulders after last week’s, I don’t know whether we were all a little bit uptight after winning for so long, but our training was really good last week, and everyone was up and about.
“We’ll go into this week really positive and take that feeling from Saturday into the grand final and go and enjoy it.
“We’ve been there and done it before, we know what to expect and we’ve got it done when it counts.
“We have that experience and we’re confident.”
