Deer Park’s Shaun Buttigieg-Clarke takes a hanger. 83186_21 Pictures: DAMIAN VISENTINI
By MICHAEL ESPOSITO
THE crowd flocked to see Kouta, but Daniel McKerracher was the true star of the show, taking a huge pack mark and kicking the winning goal to hand St Albans a two-point win over Deer Park in a classic on Sunday.
Anthony Koutoufides, in a one-off appearance for Deer Park, had little impact on the game besides an early goal and a short period in the ruck. He only played up until three quarter time.
The margin never got out to more than two goals in a game that both sides were prepared to take on. The 12.10 (82) to 11.14 (80) win has kept St Albans in the hunt for a top five spot after a horrendous start to the season.
“We were one and seven, and people were saying we were terrible, and suddenly we’ve won three in a row and played two really good games against Spotswood and Hoppers,” Saints coach Ian Denny said.
After St Albans got two goals up early in the second quarter, the Lions stepped it up with Robert Trajovksi finding more of the ball in the middle and Shaun Buttigieg-Clarke kicking two in a row to level the scores.
Deer Park was seven points up in the third quarter when a melee broke out, and in farcical scenes both teams kicked a goal while most payers were still in the melee.
Jack Sims kicked two in a row late in the fourth quarter to give the Saints a nine-point lead at the main break.
Graham Cattereall put Deer Park in front with a superb crumbing goal, but St Albans champion Tim Jenkins replied, before Deer Park’s young gun Kevin Klix kicked the goal of the day, bringing the ball to ground against two opponents, picking it up and kicking a 45m goal off one step.
But it was Jenkins again who was the architect of the winning goal. He found the ball in traffic on the wing, kicked it inboard to McKerracher, who sealed the victory.
“I think both sides should good character, we were just lucky enough to be in front when the siren went,” Denny said.
“They were starting to press forward o they might have been a chance to go forward and kick a goal and win the game, and full credit to both teams.
“It was a fantastic day for local footy, I think what local footy cries out for is when you have these special games and you get a whole lot of people and you put a game on accordingly.
“People will hopefully go away and say lets go and watch a game of Western Region footy.”
Denny said his side has recovered from a poor start to the season, which included a 90-point loss to Deer Park in Round 1.
“We weren’t focused on playing footy we were more focused on who was playing and who wasn’t. So there were was a lot of conversations going on and not many were about footy.
“It’s a lot to do with trust. You have to trust everybody, everybody has to trust the game plan, everybody has to trust each other, everybody has to trust their own ability, and even today we still lacked a little bit of trust at times.
“We don’t trust ourselves to actually make those short kicks and hold onto it, instead we kick long and look for safety. We don’t mind if you make mistakes, just make sure you make mistakes for the right reasons.”
