Australian Football

Match Report

The last of the Saturday games now takes us through the city and to the inner southern suburb of Unley, the Double Blues and the Bloods fronting up at the Wigan Oval. The Blues really only needed one solid quarter of football to put away the Bloods back in Round 1 at Richmond, winning by 43 points. They opened the match kicking six goals to one, then despite their wayward shooting from there would have no trouble keeping the Bloods well away from any late upset. The Blues were wasteful in their third quarter against Norwood last week, they attempted a last term comeback but their wayward shooting put them 26 points short. The Bloods still can't buy a win, unable to repeat Centrals' upset of the Eagles the week before as they went down to the premiers by 20 points at home. The Blues didn't get away to a fast start this time around, only managing 2.3 in the opening term. But the Bloods would score one behind to start with, allowing the Blues to start the game with a 14-point quarter-time lead. Sturt would then have a stellar second quarter, keeping the lowly Bloods to four behinds whilst bagging 5.3 for themselves to go into the half-time break with a 43-point game-breaking lead. There really wasn't going to be any comeback from here, lets be honest. A win of any description was back in their premiership season of 2015, you have to look a little further for one at Oxford Terrace. The streak of defeats at Unley for the Bloods is nearly a decade long, their last win at the Blues' home deck coming back in 2013. Those victories seemed so far away today. To the Bloods' credit, they cut the gap down a little by the three quarter-time siren, but could have done so much better with their accuracy. They scored 3.2 to 1.1, reducing the deficit to five goals. If only they could have kept up the pressure in the final term, the bug biting again as Westies scored 1.4 as the home side added 3.2 to their tally to run out 40-point victors. Casey Voss continues to be one of Sturt's big contributors, taking best afield honours with 27 disposals and 13 marks. For the Bloods, Patrick Fairlie was again best on ground with 28 disposals, 14 tackles and 11 clearances.