By Michael Esposito
ALBION has set up a preliminary final clash against Spotswood after a resounding victory over Sunshine in the WRFL qualifying final on Saturday.
The scoreboard displayed a 27-point winning margin, but the result was flattering to the Kangaroos, who kicked six goals to one in the final quarter when their fate had already been determined.
The Cats had a scintillating third term in which they piled on six goals to nothing to amass a 59-point lead at the final break.
Sunshine could only manage two goals up until three-quarter time as Albion controlled every facet of the game, as reflected in some stark statistics. At three quarter time, Albion had 46 inside 50s to Sunshine’s 18. This dominance was due to the Cats’ greater intensity, their superiority at the stoppages and their ability to break the lines and deliver to a plethora of capable goalkickers, including Shaydon Bloomfield (two goals), Steven Pearce (2), Sam Stephens (2), and Brad Hewat (1).
Sunshine’s encouraging last quarter effort would give the side some confidence going into the sudden-death game against St Albans on Sunday, while Albion coach Paul Harrison did not think the Cats’ fade-out showed any real signs of vulnerability.
“I think that can happen a bit when the game was probably over at three quarter time and we kicked the first goal of the last quarter, and obviously the boys took the foot off the pedal,” Harrison said.
“We took three or four boys off, our full forward, centre half forward, and a couple of our on-ballers just to give them a bit of a breather so that can happen when the sting’s out of the game.”
Harrison was pleased with his side’s attack on the footy.
“We put a lot of emphasis on the contested footy over the past 8-10 weeks, it’s been a big part of our game and something we measure our players by, so I thought early when the game was there to be won our boys were very hard at it,” he said.
“I thought it was a pretty even performance across the board. I was probably most happy with that, that we were able to get a good even spread of contributors and we didn’t rely on any one or two or three players to get the job done for us.
“We need to have 22 good players for us to beat sides like Spotswood.”
Spotswood will be clear favourite to defeat Albion this weekend and advance to the grand final, but Harrsion believed his side was a far better outfit than the last times these two teams met, when Spotswood won by 81 points in round 11.
“I think the pressure’s on them (Spotswood). We’ll go out there and play the way we’ve been playing and we think that on our day that’s good enough to beat them.
“They’re strong everywhere, they’ve got two very good key forwards, they score heavily against opposition and they restrict oppositions to low scores and their midfield’s all class, so we’re going to have to be on our game.
“We think we’re better equipped now than we were when we played them last time.”
Sunshine coach Ben Kelly told Wyn FM radio that his forwards did not put enough scoreboard pressure on Albion, and they let their opponents run clear too easily.
“We had contributors here and there but not consistently enough so that’s something we’ll work on during the week and try and get our set-up right,” he said.
“Maybe we didn’t set up as well as we could have.
“We might not have got our match-ups right but the way (Glenn) Manton peels of was a bit of an issue and what we had planned for that didn’t work for us. If we play them in 14 days we’ll have a bit of an idea of how we will structure up that day.”
Kelly said his young side will be better for the experience.
“They’ve got the first one under the belt now and they realise what intensity it has to be played at and the hardness at the ball on those little things that it takes to win a final, so hopefully it does rub off on us next week and the players draw from the experience and learn from it.”
