Round 11 - Weekly Wrap

Under 8s

Heading into the holidays, the under 8s have loved showing off how far they’ve come. Things were hard with a few kids already heading off on their winter adventures and with a slippery ball, but they showed plenty of desire and had heaps of fun.

Theo snapped a couple of lovely goals, Connie and Alyssa had plenty of the ball when they weren’t chatting to each other, all in all the team have come a long way and we can’t wait to be back out there already.

Under 10s

Much friendlier game for the kids this week!

Our aim was to share the ball around, kick lot's of goals and have fun. The kids succeeded with all of the above. They chased and tackled well and are improving every game! Lots of kicking and marking over the holidays team. Really proud of all of your efforts and looking forward to the 2nd half of the season.

Under 12s

In another tough, hard game our boys took on a undermanned but still big Coolum team.  The boys went down by 3 points in an absolute classic.

Score 5.6-36 to 4.9-33

Again, with the help of a couple of under 10's the boys battled hard throughout the game. Liam was winning every ruck contest and the midfield was smashing it. Our inaccuracy in front of goal cost us early from opening a big lead.

However, the boys kept going in the second quarter and took the lead going into half time, the consistent attack on the ball was very apparent.

An injury to Liam at the start of the third caused a shuffle in the midfield and Coolum started to get on top, the boys continued to battle awesomely but Coolum was playing at least 3 boys behind the play making our forward line very congested. 

The last quarter was extremely tight and nerve racking,  our defensive pressure all around the ground was amazing and we had the ball in our half at least 70% of the time but missed our opportunities in front of goal to seal it. As tends to happen in footy Coolum managed to escape our forward press and got out the back of the defense and scored a cheap goal to put them in front by 3 points.

Which was the final score in the end.

The coaching staff were again extremely proud of the efforts showed by the boys, we just need to be a little more composed when we have the ball

Big thanks as always, to the parents who helped with boundary, water etc.

I think our first Div 1 win is not far away.. looking forward to taking on the jets in a couple of weeks.

I hope everyone has a safe and fun holiday break,

Paul.

Under 14s

So the boys took on Caloundra Panthers who recently returned to Div 2 after initially grading as a Div 1 team. We were missing several key players and only actually had had 13 under 14s. The Glasshouse under 12s provided four players, we kept one on the bench for the first half of game meaning we played with 16 while Caloundra did not adjust their numbers and played with 18 for over half the game until we mentioned it to them! Despite the disadvantages the boys battled ferociously and really matched the opposition for half the game. Fierce tackling and determination at the ball seemed to rattle them! Inevitably the boys ran out of legs and the score blew out in the last qtr. 

I was impressed with fitness and determination. The boys are starting to implement training drills on field and are looking to feed quick hand passes to each other and skills have improved.

Things to work on include decision making and second, third efforts and talk talk talk!

Under 16s

Hinterland Coolum VS Gympie on Sunday

The Gympie boys were very keen to impress  with some very tall and solid boys. We got off to a good start, attacking the ball and running it wide and moving it inside 50 well. We were ahead on the scoreboard at halftime, but the intensity remained high from both teams, three of our smaller bodied players all played their best games to date, with Jake, Brodie and Kye attacking the ball more ferociously than ever before, this was great to see and all applauded their efforts.

The Cats came out after halftime and attacked well outscoring our boys, the large ground was challenging our leads to space, our  fitness and determination and our game plan. Our defence was playing well but the ball was coming in quick from their big midfielders and their forwards converted from high percentage shots from in front of goals. Our opposition went into the 3 quarter time break with the momentum. At the last change we refocused on our game plan to run to space and play smart possession footy. Our talk lifted, and we were back on the game, in a thrilling last quarter where the lead changed multiple times and both teams continued to tackle hard, unfortunately on a couple of runaway efforts from fast breaks we turned the ball over and as we all now the opposition who are trailing then become free and turnovers are costly when you have already run off your player and are supporting the ball carrier, this allowed Gympie to get use of the ball from intercepts as opposed to winning it. But again we tried and with scores leveled we took it inside our attacking 50 one last time, but the siren sounded before we could reset from a stoppage to have the last scoring shot.

The crowd applauded the of all the boys for there continued efforts as the nail biter concluded with exhausted players from both teams.

We will need to continue to get fitter, work on our marking contests, and the crumbs at ground level with more two way talk required

Under 17s Girls

Coolum 6-4-40 Blues 1-1-7

As they have done most weeks, the girls continue to improve with all players having individual goals to work on combined with the teams overall focus points.

With both teams being low on numbers it was always going to be a struggle finding the balance between numbers to the ball and structure. Our girls always being there to help each other sometimes left large holes on the field turning it into a foot race with Coolum. Unfortunately, our opposition took the advantage at that point. Our ability to win the contest was good and we won a few, however Coolum player's managed to take effective leverage of open space and utilising it to full potential. 

With holidays upon us, all girls are invited to train with the Sapphire's women's team over the holidays to continue training in preparation for first game back on the 20th of July.

Alright that’s it, another fantastic weekend of junior footy from the Blues.