Australian Football

Match Report

Saturday afternoon football first takes us up Port Road as far as Woodville, to the Maughan Thiem Hyundai Oval for the match between the Eagles and the Bulldogs. There's a lot of feeling between these sides, they became the new rivals of the competition during the 2000's after several years of constantly running into each other in finals football and during the course of 12 seasons, would face off in six Grand Finals in which the Dogs won four flags to the Eagles' two. While last season's points were shared by the respective home teams, earlier this year the Eagles managed to break through for a rare victory at the Ponderosa. It was Round 4 where they broke their Elizabeth hoodoo to tune of 40 points. While the Dogs smashed the hell out of the Roosters last weekend, the Eagles meeting with the Crows seemed to reveal some vulnerabilities. 

Early in the first term it had appeared that the Eagles had addressed those, but instead of being a few goals up at quarter-time, the Dogs drew it back to one straight kick after scoring 3.1 to 4.1. The second quarter was an arm-wrestle, the Dogs levelling the scores by the long break after kicking 2.1 to 1.1. But as has been the case with Centrals this season, keeping up such an effort against quality opposition has been lacking and when play resumed, the skill errors that hindered the Eagles were now going to hinder the Dogs. Several turnovers allowed the Eagles to produce a game-breaking 6.2 third term, the Dogs two goals saw the three quarter-time gap set at 26 points. The arm-wrestle resumed in the final term, but the Eagles' muscle proved superior in the end as they scored 2.3 to 1.3 to take a 32-point victory. 

Jared Petrenko was named best for the Eagles, the Dogs named captain Paul Thomas as their best afield.