By Michael Esposito
WERRIBEE slipped into an all too familiar habit on Saturday, lapsing for one quarter to give Port Melbourne enough of a run-on to post a five-goal victory.
The Tigers, as they have done consistently this season, put three solid quarters of football together, but went missing in the third quarter, mustering just three points to Port Melbourne’s four goals.
Werribee coach Simon Atkins lamented his side’s poor thirty minutes undoing what was otherwise an admirable performance.
“For three quarters we did play really good football, our tackle count was good, I thought our style of footy was good, and I thought our forward line looked a little bit potent so there’s a lot of positives. Its just disappointing that we went to sleep in the third quarter,” he said.
Atkins said the statistics were proof of Werribee’s listless third term.
“They had 132 possessions in the third quarter which is just outrageous, so when the call goes out to try to tighten up a little bit that’s all that was needed for us to be really competitive and go down to the wire with them.”
Besides that one quarter, Werribee’s defensive pressure was impressive on the versatile Port Melbourne forward line.
“I thought we had them covered, that’s why they shared it around a bit – but we just weren’t tight enough,” he said.
“At VFL level, with the evenness of the competition, you’ve just got to be able to continue to reproduce your strategies in the game, and identify that teams do get run-ons, but it’s just about locking down and playing to our strengths.”
Werribee went into the game coming off a good win against Frankston, in which the Tigers produced a late quarter burst, atypical of most of their performances this season.
Atkins found some positives in the fact that Werribee regrouped after its horrid third term and took the challenge up to Port Melbourne.
“One thing that we haven’t really done in the last couple of games that we did (on Saturday) is that we really stood up and in the last quarter and came back and had a bit of a chance.
“What we’ve shown is that if we do get some consistency on the board we are a really competitive team and we can challenge most teams, and our ladder opposition doesn’t show that. But at the end of the day that’s what we’re searching for. We’re searching for a four-quarter consistent effort from a majority of the team.”
