Delayed Season Wrap up!

Better late than never I spose. But prompted by Bob, who asked me to do the season wrap up for the club newsletter thingo. So happy reading.

The season started with new faces and new hope (like Star Wars). Whilst we lost a few experienced (read: old) heads at the back we recruited well with the draw of last season’s minor premiers (in AA7’s!). (Of course the ever green Dave Bassett went around for another year.) Early promise turned into early results and an opening round victory of 9-0 at LH Waud got us off to a flying start. Some may point to the fact that we played against a 9-man side for this result, personally I’d point to good recruitment, a hard off season and commitment from all the boys! The opening few weeks culminated in a hard fought win over league leaders, and eventual minor premiers and Grand Finalists, Normanhurst, 2-1. It was a great game and really showed our mix of good passing, patience in defence and not giving up against a technically better, fitter, taller side.

Unfortunately we didn’t finish the opening round the way we started with our only 4 losses coming back to back in matches 5 to 8. These losses can generally be contributed to a lack of numbers both at training and on game day and probably were a sign of our only weakness, but one that was to plague us all season. On our day we were an equal match for any of the teams in our competition. Heads were down after match 8, but in true Rovers spirit we “fired up” and got on with the job of securing a top 4 place with 5 wins and a draw to finish the season. Whilst our top four spot was sealed with an opposition forfeit, we came out in the last round and proved we deserved it, to finish 3rd in the regular season with a 3-1 victory!

With the first week of round robin washed out it really hurt our chances with the curse of availability hitting us hard again. Losing our first game in a heart breaker which should of been a draw (if football was fair, not the cruel mistress that we love so much), conceding late to go down 3-2 to eventual champions North Ryde. It took two individual goals from their best player to break us. Knowing that we needed a clear 2 goal win margin in our second round robin game wasn’t helped by only having 10 at kick off and 11 soon after (our weakness struck again). But full credit to all that played we never said never and fought well to go down 3-1 to the other grand finalists Normanhurst.

Lot of positives out of a season of promise for the AA10’s! My personal highlights (not the views of the team) were our win against Normanhurst, Kevin getting the most ridiculous two yellow cards, one for dissent and one for jumping in front of a player trying to take a throw in (within 2 minutes for his red!), Jarrod trying to claim his goal going wide which took a deflection, and my own saved (not missed) penalty which re-affirmed my status of centre back!


Stay tuned for my a-league rants starting as I could be bothered shortly!

See you at the back stick, defending it most likely.
Peace