Tara Murray
Results don’t do the Western Rams justice in the Riddell District Football League.
The Rams are the only team without a win after five rounds, but have shown signs they are closing the gap with the top sides.
Rams coach Marty Weaver said the key for them was now playing four quarters of football.
“The results don’t do us justice to be honest,” he said.
“We’ve been struggling with players with illness and COVID-19 protocols. We’re having five to 10 players pulling out across our sides each week.
“We’ve played some reasonable football, but we haven’t been able to put it all together.”
Having not won a game since 2018 the Rams are coming from a long way back.
Weaver, who said pre-season that they were looking to decrease their losing margin, said they had been in a lot of games this season.
“Like against Romsey we were a couple of goals down at half time and still in the game at three quarter time,” he said.
“Against Lancefield we let them jump us early. We thought we were in with a reasonable chance.
“We won the second half..
“Against Woodend, same sort of thing. We were down by five goals at half time… We were about four goals down at three quarter time.
“The last quarter we had no bench and ran out of legs and they kicked 12 goals. That was our highest losing margin of the year.”
Weaver said as well as having to deal with illness and outs, the side was still learning to gel together.
There has been a massive turnover of players at the club in recent years.
“We’re still a new list,” he said. “On the weekend’s game we had one player who was at the club and he hurt his knee early.
“We’ve got a bunch of blokes who are brand new. Only about half a dozen have been here the last few seasons, everyone else is brand new.
“We will continue to work on things.”
Mitch Portoglou, Ricky Cameron and Michael Oddie have been some of the standards for the Rams.
The tests keep coming with the side facing Wallan on Saturday.
They then face Riddell, Macedon and Diggers Rest.
“They are top four teams and it will be a challenge and it will really give me a bit more indication where we are at.”
