By ADEM SARICAOGLU
MELTON South coach Mathew Sutton has likened his Panthers to the AFL’s Kangaroos, claiming his club is the North Melbourne of the Ballarat Football League.
South suffered its seventh loss of the year on Saturday at home to finals-bound Redan and for three quarters of the game proved to be more than competitive.
However a poor second term in which the visitors piled on five unanswered goals led to the Panthers’ downfall.
The final margin was 28 points. It leaves South seventh on the table with five games and a bye to come, but Sutton is still eyeing off a finals berth come season’s end.
“I think we’ll definitely still challenge for that sixth spot, realistically, but in saying that – I feel like we are the North Melbourne of the comp,” Sutton said.
“We show three-quarter glimpses that we can match it with the best, and we then have those quarters where we’re not. “Teams are getting away from us in that one quarter. All bar North (Ballarat) City and Darley probably got away from us, but we haven’t really been flogged by the good sides,” he said.
“We’ve stuck with them, so it shows glimpses that we can match it.”
Sutton denied the recent saga that clouded the departure of former playing assistant coach Leigh Burke had any residual impact on the playing group, despite the fact his club has lost four of its last five outings.
Instead the coach was keen to praise his young group for stepping up on the field.
“I don’t think we’ve been too fussed,” he said. “As (hard) as it is to lose a good player, sometimes those players can be cancers to your football group, so it’s probably been a good thing for us.”
Coming off a tense 14-point loss to East Point seven days earlier, the Panthers were keen to bounce back on Saturday and started their affair with Redan well, despite trailing by two points at quarter time.
By halftime, however, that lead had stretched to 34, effectively killing the game despite South’s good response in the third term to reduce it to three kicks by the final change.
Sutton led the way up forward with four goals while ruckman Craig Searle was South’s best player.
“It was a bit of a brain fade in the second quarter, I think, but other than that I thought our pressure for three quarters was fantastic,” Sutton said.
