Benjamin Millar
Melton South powered back into winning form on Saturday to down Darley by 28 points to claim their third victory in their past four matches in the Ballarat Football League.
After a slow start to the season with a big loss to Melton in the opening round and falling one point short of Redan in round two, the Panthers bounced back against Bacchus Marsh and Sunbury.
Lake Wendouree took the wind from the team’s sails following the bye before the COVID-19 lockdown put the brakes on the competition for four weeks.
Melton South coach Heath Pritchard said the 13.12(90) to 9.8(62) win over Darley was welcome after the snap lockdown brought the team’s ability to train to a sudden halt.
“Obviously it’s pretty hard coming back after only a couple of training sessions, but we’re playing pretty good footy,” he said.
“We’ve had a couple of bad days at the office in the Lake Wendouree game and the Melton game, but with the others we’ve been right in there.
“I was really happy with the start against Darley, our starts haven’t been great, and the fact we finished off strongly as well.”
Pritchard said the lack of training had made it difficult to find the right balance in physical contests without risking injury, but his charges managed to control the game well throughout.
It’s a tricky one because the guys hadn’t trained for so long and the regional teams were able to keep up training, so we just haven’t had that sort of contact in four weeks,” he said.
“But our start was really good and the ball movement was strong, to Darley’s credit they bottled us up for a while but I was happy with the fact we were able to finish well.”
The win leaves Melton South on 12 points from three wins and three losses – the same points as third-placed Bacchus Marsh yet ninth place on the ladder based on for and against.
Pritchard said the well-balanced competition means any team can beat any other team on their day.
“It’s certainly a close comp and sides on any given day can beat anyone so we’ve just got to make sure we keep winning,” he said.
The next step will be tackling Ballarat in Ballarat for round eight this Saturday, always a challenging task.
“We’ve got to go up to Ballarat this week, they had a good win against East Point,” he said.
“They’ve been really competitive this year and they’re coming off a good win – their quarters won ratio is very good which shows they are a competitive team.”
Round eight will also see Darley take on East Point at Eastern Oval, Bacchus Marsh host Lake Wendouree at Maddingley Park and table-toppers Melton travel to mars Stadium to take on North Ballarat.
All matches are scheduled for 2.15pm.
