Eagles v West at Woodville, Saturday afternoon

This should be a ripper. The Eagles woke up from their sleep at half-time against Sturt and looked dangerous after that.

West showed a fast, attacking style against Central. Can they overcome a likely ruck deficiency to win for the first time in many years at Woodville?

Will be there for the 2nd Eagles win this year.
u16s/u18s will be at City Mazda on Friday night starting from 5 pm

Eagles by 3-4 goals.

before looking at the teams, i'd suggest this is the classic 50/50 match & i have no idea who to pick as yet

I think you're right, Bayman. Hard to see aclear winner here. West were really good against Central and at half-time of the Sturt game, I thought we'd win easily this week. The Eagles certainly turned it around after half-time and it's an intriguing match-up.

It's a long time since we won at Woodville, but we've graually broken most of the ground hoodoos, so that doesn't worry me. The Eagles forward line looks potent, but I'm happy with Ferguson and Tippett as match-ups. I think we can expoloit the Eagles defence, but Parry is likely to give the Eagles midfielders first use and that's a big start.

Looking forward to a great game.

Eagles league side

FF Carey Borholm Poole

HF Kane Grocke Ainger

C Jarrad Lewis Goldsworthy

HB Sumner Thompson Z Fitgerald

FB Raymond Culley Giuffreda

Ruck Parry Powell Rowntree
Interchange Hall Allmond Ellis-Yolmen
Lane Day
Ins Z Fitzgerald Allmond Kane
Outs Staple (Omitted)


.

As expected Brad Crouch is out of the Bloods side and selected to play his first AFL game for the Cows.

This should be a great game and I will tip a win for the Bloods.

bayman wrote:before looking at the teams, i'd suggest this is the classic 50/50 match & i have no idea who to pick as yet

i'll go West but i don't know why, i'd imagine this will go down to the wire

Eags by under 10pts in a tight one,only cause its at home.

Eagles looked good after half time last week, but their 1st half was close to pathetic. A repeat of that and West will win comfortably.

I just feel West is in better form at the moment and may squeeze in by 10 points.

Westies to show Round 1 wasn't a fluke and they have a pretty fair team.

Sorry Westies fans, the Eagles know how to make Woodville the house of pain for the Bloods to many times over, would love to pick West but think Woodville will have enough in the tank to win this one. - Woodville by 32pts.

I'm interested in who will drop out of the Eagles side !!
Go Eagles !!

Looking forward to this game, Westies smashed a couple if hoodoo's last year and I think they will be too good for the Eagles today. Midfield is where we will win it IMO.

Match of the round for me this game. West still don't seem to have the rating of the football public outside of Richmond and the Eagles at home is one of hardest asks in football. Should be a great clash between two genuine premiership contenders.

Eagles 3.2 3.4 4.5 7.8 (50)
West 5.5 7.9 14.12 18.14 (122)

Goals
Eagles: Thompson, Ainger, Grocke, Ellis-Yolmen, Carey, Fitzgerald, Lewis.
West: Silverlock, Anderson, Fielke, Beech, Keough, Webb, Gray 2, Ezard, Macreadie, Slattery, Homburg.

Reserves
Eagles 14.8 (92)
West 11.9 (75)

It's been years of toil and hard work following Westies, but the tide has turned. Today, the Bloods put on a wonderful display of fast-running, high pressure football. It was exciting, it was exhilarating, it was an exclamation mark that told the footy world that West would be a force.

I'll give a match report tomorrow, but watch out for the Bloods.

Good to see the scores they're kicking r&b

Yes, TD. They've been playing some exhilaring footy. I'm still getting used to seeing them kick 10 goals in a quarter last week and 7 in one quarter this week.

The interesting thing about yesterday was they had 7 players kick 2 goals each and another 4 kick a goal also.

That was a super impressive performance from West who finally might start to get the respect I think they should have received last year.

Best game I've seen from the Bloods in four seasons. Four quarters of entertaining, dominant hard-running football.

Will presumably lose Cassisi next week and probably won't see Crouch again. May keep Gray for one more game, but Tuck, Green and Hartlett to return.

Nelson was much better this week, have to hope he never gets injured.

A pack formed, the ball came out, there were a couple of spreading handpasses and it finished in the hands of No 6 for West. Their supporters watched, slightly puzzled, but happily impressed. Eagles fans had long before checked their Budget and read; Anderson, Ryan, doesn't weigh much, isn't big, hasn't played that many games. If they were keen fans, they might have found out he played last year for the wonderfully named Walpeup-Underbool, premiers in their league last year, supplemented by a host of ex-west players, including the wonderful Chris Chubb.

No 6 proceeded to run. And run a bit more. And run faster than anyone on the field. By a fair margin.

He did it a lot yesterday and was named second best on ground behind Chris Schmidt.

Schmidt is No 5. He racked up 138 'Dream Team' points. He was tagged and he did as he pleased. All day.

I once said Ryan Ferguson was the best CHB in the League. That was received with laughter and mockery. It's now accepted and I apologise for the self-indulgence, but he's one of the best payers I've seen at West in my decades of following them. All the pre-game talk was rightfully about the danger posed by Ainger and Grocke. They're both great players, but Ainger had his quietest day for a long time before coming off injured and defeated by Ferguson late in the game.

Grocke, another very good player, was also quiet, but nobody had mentioned his opponent before the game. That was a bit of an oversight by the footy pundits, I thought.

Joel Tippett won that battle decisively.

I had sat on the bench at Woodville Oval, or run around the ground for 10 years without tasting victory, so excuse me having a bit of triumphalism just this once. Next time is another game and the result may well be reversed, but 10 years of trudging into the visitor's room after defeat isn't fun.

There was so much to love from a supporter's point of view. The much smaller Taite Silverlock being wrapped up in a Craig Parry tackle and wrestling his way out of it; Tyson Slattery missing a mark, getting angry and smashing into the closest Eagles opponent. Again, Craig Parry (without doubt a ruckman I'd love to have at Westies); Nick Homburg taking several bounces and putting the pill on Daniel Webb's chest; Rory Laird again racking up over 30 possessions from defence and Brad Mangan playing as the third tall defender showing that he will be a valuable addition back there.

There have been a lot of tough years and a tidal wave of criticism of our playing style. Fair enough too, but West supporters have been a loyal and hardy lot and they're pinching themselves over our first two performances.

Two things.

If you get the chance, watch them, it will be worth it,

Secondly, Andrew Collins can coach and he's passionate about the SANFL and against the AFL reserves playing in the SANFL.

I'm loving it all, but I know the Panthers have had a week off and will be determined to beat us at Noarlunga next Friday night.

It should be a great game.

dare i say, are West the real deal ?



they looked very good in the first half i watched on ABCTV before walking over to the Bay Oval to watch the reserves

They looked a lot better again in the last half, Bayman.

redandblack wrote:They looked a lot better again in the last half, Bayman.

i'll set the alarm & watch the second half on Thursday morning