By LIAM TWOMEY
A STRONG Northern Blues outfit accounted for Werribee by 15 points in a hard-fought VFL clash on Saturday night.
The Blues enjoyed the company of senior Carlton listed players Aaron Joseph, Ed Curnow, Heath Scotland, Frazer Dale, Robert Warnock and Dylan Buckley and the experience proved invaluable as they led at every change en route to the victory.
For the Tigers, Scott Clouston continued his early season form for his new club, kicking four goals while Ben Warren, Mason Wood and Majak Daw finished with two each.
The 20.10 (130) to 17.13 (115) loss is the Tigers first for the year after they opened the season with a huge win over Port Melbourne.
Werribee coach Scott West was disappointed with the result but paid credit to a tough Northern Blues outfit.
“They were good, they were really good the Northern Blues,” West said.
“I didn’t think we were ever really out of the game. I think the margin blew out to about five goals at one stage early in the last quarter when they kicked the first couple but from my point of view it was really frustrating that we couldn’t get the margin under nine points at any particular stage.
“I think we cleaned things up a little bit in the last quarter and made a couple of moves that went our way.
“They put us under a lot of pressure and we just didn’t have time and space to be able to use the footy and our guys didn’t adjust so full credit to them.”
Tyson Thomas proved a handful on the Blues’ forward line, kicking five goals while Timmy Totevski booted two to help set up the win.
Werribee will now turn its attention to its second night game in two weeks against Collingwood on Saturday.
The Magpies enter the game in good form after thrashing North Ballarat by 52 points in their first game of the year. “We really start our preparation for that one straight away,” West said.
“It is one of those times where I put it on the players to go away and analyse their own performance and analyse their own preparation.
“I will look at it from a team aspect and we will marry them together on Monday or Tuesday and get stuck into it pretty quickly.”
