Werribee’s Kyle Hartigan kicks clear as Casey’s Brendan Fevola gives chase. 69335 Picture: DAVID MCCALLUM
BY MICHAEL ESPOSITO
WERRIBEE left the battle for fourth spot wide open after failing to fire a shot against Casey on Saturday.
The Scorpions have only lost three games at Casey Fields in the past two seasons, and they never looked like dropping Saturday’s game, defeating the Tigers 17.11 (113) to 10.9 (69), and stealing fourth spot from Werribee.
Brendan Fevola bagged six goals for Casey but for Werribee coach Paul Satterley, he wasn’t the main problem.
“They were really able to negate a lot of what we’ve done really well this year which has been our switch of play and our ability to get some run and rebound from half-back,” he said.
“I thought where the game was going to be won or lost was in the midfield. We’ve been the number one clearance side all year and they carved us up in there. If you’re not winning the clearances and you’re but getting run off half-back it doesn’t go well for a potential win against a quality side.”
Kyle Hartigan, who marked Fevola all game, was one of the few players Satterley commended.
“It was always going to be hard for him with the amount of footy that was coming in but he just stuck to his task and at no stage did I ever want to take him off (Fevola),” he said.
“He was probably stiff on a couple of those goals. I thought he was one player who really tied his guts out all day so I was really pleased with him.
“Another area we’ve been good at is our ability to get a third man up or get a spare defender to help out their team-mates and again we didn’t do that well either. So really they unraveled just about every strength of our performances that we had this year.”
Satterley said Hamish McIntosh and Ben Ross were the only clear winners of their positions.
The Tigers will have to beat North Ballarat at Eureka Stadium this Saturday to secure fourth spot. There could hardly be a mightier challenge.
“We’ve copped a couple of shellackings this year and I think on every occasion we’ve come back pretty well the week after. So that’s usually a good sign that you’re group’s got a bit of character.
“We learnt a lot when we played them earlier in the year. They were really aggressive in their tackling and they put physical pressure on us, so that’s something we’ve got to too much better at.”
