BFL: Barwon Heads merciless against Portarlington in huge win
Barwon Heads piled on the pain for Portarlington in round 2, but the Demons are hoping to extract some wisdom from the clash with the Seagulls.
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Portarlington coach Warren Finlayson conceded his side was still “a fair way off” competing against the best teams in the BFL after a 157-point loss at the hands of Barwon Heads.
The reigning premiers did not let up in their victory over last year’s wooden spooners, piling on 45 scoring shots to run out 26.19 (175) to 2.6 (18) victors.
Finlayson said his side would learn from the big loss, after a competitive round 1 clash against Newcomb.
“They’re clearly the benchmark of the competition,” he said.
“There’s a difference when you’ve been playing football together for long periods of time and you have a style that suits the team and everyone knows, we’re still learning how to play together.
“We’ll continue to grow and learn, hopefully we can take some things from them and help ourselves get better because they were clearly a class above us.”
Finlayson said both the Seagulls’ defensive and attacking structures were impressive.
“The way they set up behind the ball was really hard to beat, they’ve got guys back there who play a really good brand of footy,” he said.
“Then coming the other way they are really hard to stop the surge, their mentality they put out on the park is so hard to beat when they’re going.
“Their run through half back and through the middle gave them really good chances to penetrate deep forward and we just couldn’t stop that.”
Young Seagull Ollie Wiltshire led the way with five goals for Barwon Heads, while five other players kicked at least three goals each and four more hit the scoreboard in the rout.
Barwon Heads co-coach Mitch Herbison, who slotted three majors in the win, said
“From the outset the boys applied themselves and played the brand of footy that we were hoping to play,” he said.
“The good thing was we had a spread of goal kickers, it wasn’t just one guy kicking them all, and we also kept them to a low score as well, showing defensively we were pretty solid too.
“We were pretty clean for most of the day, the conditions were pretty tough to play in but for most of the day we used the ball quite well.”
Originally published as BFL: Barwon Heads merciless against Portarlington in huge win
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