By LIAM TWOMEY
WHAT a difference a few weeks can make in a season of football.
Just over a month ago Taylors Lakes was on the verge of suffering its second relegation in two years and falling into the Essendon District Football League’s third division.
But a mid season revival has turned the club’s prospects around as it rockets up the ladder towards a finals campaign.
Head coach Steve Burns is rapt with the adjustments his side has made after the tough start to the year.
“We are very happy. We are not quite there yet but we are starting to play our footy again,” Burns said. “We are starting to win some contested ball, get it inside 50 and give our forwards a chance of kicking a winning score.”
Despite the outstanding turnaround in form, Burns will ensure the playing group don’t get ahead of themselves with a long way to go in the season.
He said the strength of the B Grade competition meant there would be no easy games from here on out.
“The B grade competition is really tight at the moment and it is going to be like that forever with the changes they have made,” he said.
“I think the group was always confident that they could get it right. I kept saying to them that they had to be wary of where we were at and they kept saying, don’t worry about it coach. To their credit they have been right and started to string some good games together.”
In the past seven rounds of football, the Lions have defeated Westmeadows, Hillside, Moonee Valley, East Keilor, Keilor Park Roxburgh Park and Glenroy with the club’s only loss coming against league leader Airport West.
On that occasion, the Lions were defeated by 170 points and Burns admitted the loss was hard to take.
“That hurt us at the time. We had never been beaten like that. We played A Grade footy last year and were never beaten like that. It was a bit of a shock,” Burns said.
“They’re a good side and have a lot of quality players. They still had a couple out that day.
“We learnt a lot about them and hopefully next time we play them we can close the gap a little bit. You’d hate to think that we’d go getting beaten by 28 goals again. I think we are a lot better side now than what we were then.”
