I received an anonymous text message early Saturday morning with some advice from a keen supporter - It read "If you win the toss, kick with the wind"!  Profound words from a recently retired goal umpire and something we took on board quite obviously.

Playing at the Marles is always a delight and the ground conditions were pristine to say the least.  The wind on the other hand was a different story.  It can ruin a game regardless of the firepower you might have coming into the game.  So the the biggest issue we had was using the ball effectively against the elements.

Luckily we won the toss and kicking with the wind in the first quarter was an advantage but it can bring you undone.  The boys started out trying the judge the use of Cyclone Katrina and the advantage it could bring us, but the boys from Bulleen stoutly defended well for the first 10 minutes.  8 scoring shots including three majors was not a bad result considering and Tim Agius was twice the beneficiary of his mate Matt Skidmore's hard running.   In the past weeks Matt has reminded us all of his similarity to Brent Staker and gut runner provided accordingly!  We welcomed back Shaun Langdon for his first game in two years and he didn't look out of place down back. 

Kicking into Katrina, we found that patience was the key, especially with Trinity pushing a few spare players back.  Another 8 scoring shots was a good result plus many inside 50 entries was positive and Dave Stean was showing some menace around half forward.  The Agius / Staker show kept rolling on with the latter jagging a nice 6 pointer from a tight angle.  Chris Santalucia was supplying Oswald and Pasceri well but a few errant misfires should have seen us go further ahead coming into the main break.

As the wind died down, we looked for some ascendancy kicking towards the pond and we got that through Tyson Lloyd who showed some real class throughout the day.   James Glen snuck down from the backline to get onto the score sheet and the other James (Ulbrick) was starting to monster his opponents all over the ground.  His tap work was as good as any other seen this year and the on ball division led by Liam Ginnivan in the absence of Captain Skidmore, relished his abilities to get the sherrin to them.  A 6 goal term gave us a healthy lead coming into the last quarter and all that was asked by the coaches was to work harder than your opponent, run smarter and be efficient with your ball use.

The other dangerous Dan (Molan) kept his goal scoring averages up for the year and Peter Ryan also snuck through for a major before being put in cotton wool.  Four goals into the wind was a fine performance especially as Katrina was really starting to pick up and a well deserved rest this week with another huge test against St Bedes at home Saturday week.