WITH just three weeks until the Western Region Football League Division 2 finals series, Glen Orden looms as the team to beat. The Hawks added another win to their tally on the weekend, defeating Sunshine Heights by 40 points. The result sees Glen Orden remain in top spot on the Division 2 ladder with a 14-1 win/loss record for the season. A chasing pack of three teams look to be the major contenders heading into September with Parkside, Manor Lakes and Wyndhamvale occupying second, third and fourth on the ladder respectively. Sunshine Heights is three games back in fifth spot. When round 16 gets underway this weekend, Braybook will face North Sunshine, Caroline Springs and Manor Lakes will do battle, Glen Orden hosts Albanvale, Laverton will look to secure its second win of the season against Sanctuary Lakes and Sunshine Heights will travel to West Footscray. In what will be the blockbuster encounter of the week, Wyndhamvale and Parkside will square off with the result to shape the finals series.
THE Werribee Devils almost faltered in the penultimate weekend of Division Two Big V women’s basketball on Saturday night, but still managed to find a way to victory against the Melbourne University Black Angels. The Devils went into their road clash favourites with top spot in the division just about wrapped up and started the game in strong fashion, going into the half time interval six points up.However, the Black Angels came out firing in the third quarter, taking the lead off Werribee. The Devils clawed their way back in the fourth, but couldn’t get ahead by the final buzzer, sending the game into overtime. Werribee won the extra period 9-5 and hence took the game 68-64, keeping itself in the box seat to finish on top with two final games to come this weekend. Fourth on the table is Keilor, who faded in the final term of its game at home to the Casey Cavaliers on Sunday to go down by 18 points.
RACING Victoria is investigating the circumstances which led to last week’s Werribee race meeting being abandoned. The meet was called off after the completion of eight of the 10 scheduled races. RV stewards determined that a section of the track between the 900m and 600m mark had deteriorated during the meeting to the point where it was unsafe for the meeting to continue. Frenchkook, ridden by 15-year-old apprentice Boris Thornton in his first race, fell in race eight and had to be euthanased as a result of its injuries. Thornton escaped with a sore leg and bruising. The meet was already marred by injury to the horse Adoboli in race six, which was also destroyed.
“I have opened a full investigation into the circumstances that led to the fall and the meeting being abandoned, commencing with an inspection tomorrow (Thursday) morning by our tracks and facilities team,” RV Chief Executive Bernard Saundry said after the meet. “My preliminary advice is that the track was of a suitable standard for racing at the commencement of the meeting, but had deteriorated as a result of traffic throughout the eight races conducted.” Wednesday’s meeting was the last scheduled race day at Werribee before a 10 week break in the lead up to the spring carnival and Werribee Cup.
“It was disappointing the way it ended,” Werribee Racing Club CEO Ross Kendell said. “Racing Victoria is doing an assessment of the track at the moment to see if there was any issue. We have had a good program of racing since the Werribee Cup last year and after the quarantine period. We have had a number of trials here as well. The track has been handling all that pretty well and it has been a great asset to the industry. We just want to make sure we’ve got all this right and focus on that quarantine period.”
Werribee is the home to the Racing Victoria owned and operated quarantine centre where many of world’s best horses reside prior to the spring racing carnival. Saundry said he did not expect the abandonment to affect Racing Victoria’s ability to welcome international horses for this year’s carnival.
