Werribee’s Will Martiniello is chased by Williamstown’s Ben Jolley. 70639 Picture: DAMIAN VISENTINI
BY MICHAEL ESPOSITO
WERRIBEE’S fairytale run came crashing to a halt on Sunday when western rivals Williamstown put on a masterclass to defeat the Tigers by 83 points in the VFL preliminary final on Sunday.
Despite the relatively smaller-size TEAC Oval seemingly playing into Werribee’s hands, Williamstown was a team on a mission, shattering any preconceived ideas that this was going to be slogfest with a first quarter burst that Werribee never recovered from.
A shell-shocked Tigers were overwhelmed by the dashing pace, slick ball movement and merciless pressure applied by Williamstown, which kicked six first-term goals to Werribee’s none.
The Tigers’ best quarter was their second, when they booted six goals, but Williamstown went two better in what was an end-to-end game that suited the Seagulls’ run and spread.
Sam Reid played one of his best games of the season with a five-goal haul, while Brett Goodes was superb in the middle for the Gulls.
Williamstown had few winners, but Brad Mangan was superb playing on power forward Mitch Hahn, making it the second big name forward (the other being Brendan Fevola) in a row that he has kept goalless. Travis Tuck limited Ben Jolley’s influence, but Williamstown had too class around the ground, while the absence of Majak Daw, out with a fractured finger, was telling.
“We always have him as a get out of jail card down the line and today we just didn’t have that ability to when we were in a bit of strife to just go down the line. We just tried to always look for that little 45 (degrees) option, and their heat on us there was just too many turnovers,” Werribee coach Paul Satterley said.
Will Sullivan performed main ruck duties and battled valiantly, but could not keep Will Minson and Jordan Roughead down.
“We didn’t get the game on our terms at any stage today,” Satterley said. “We thought their last four weeks had been pretty soft. We didn’t feel they were really physically impacted at all in any of those games. That’s our real strength but we didn’t bring that to the table.”
Williamstown coach Peter German said the performance was “pretty much up there” with his side’s best efforts this season.
“You always worry when you have the week off that you may have lost just that little bit of sharpness but I thought it was terrific that the boys made a statement early,” he said.
“Pretty much all year (Werribee) have been a pretty offensive side, I think that they run hard and set up from down back, so that was still important that we try and negate that,” German said.
Satterley said Williamstown had far too many dominant players for Werribee to contain. Nathan Djerrkura, Christian Howard, Josh Hill and Brennan Stack all managed to break loose and cause plenty of havoc.
“We went in with a clear plan to negate three players. I thought we had (Ben) Davies absolutely under wrap, I thought young Brad (Mangan) on Hahn, we had him under wrap, and we felt that (Travis) Tuck was doing a really good job on Ben Jolley. But you can’t tag nine of them, so hence a few of them got out of the loop,” Satterley said.
Despite the loss, Satterley will take a lot out of a season that exceeded expectations.
He said the club needed an injection of outside runners to complement the side’s ball hunters.
