EDFL 2019: Tullamarine thrashes West Coburg by 68 points in Division 1

Tullamarine rebounded from a patchy start to the campaign with a breathtaking performance against West Coburg on Saturday night.

Tullamarine coach David Connell was elated with his team’s performance. Picture: Andy Brownbill

Tullamarine rebounded from a patchy start to the campaign with a breathtaking performance against West Coburg on Saturday night.

The Demons’ 68-point victory over the relegated Premier Division club at Leo Dineen Reserve is set to be used as a template for the remainder of the season as last year’s runner-up defended with discipline and attacked with authority.

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The home team dominated the contest after quarter-time, kicking 15 goals to four, on its way to an 18.10 (118) to 7.8 (50) win.

“We were extremely happy,” Tullamarine coach David Connell said.

“To be honest, if it wasn’t our best win in my time as coach, it would be pretty close.

“We did a little bit of soul-searching over the Easter break. We had a couple of hard, tough sessions on the track. It was a little bit of a line-in-the-sand time for us.

“I thought we were reasonably poor against Craigieburn for the four quarters and in Round 1 against Westmeadows we were probably pretty average for three quarters. So we probably thought we were lucky to be 1-1. We could’ve been 0-2 going into Easter.

“Consistently for four quarters, it was probably one of our better efforts. We’ve had some issues with consistency in games for a while now and I really couldn’t fault much we did.”

Anthony Liberatore is starting to find his best form. Picture: Ian Currie

The Demons trailed by 29 points at half-time of their opening-round clash with Westmeadows and copped a 46-point hammering from flag rival Craigieburn the following week.

It was not time to push the panic button, but the performances fell short of the club’s expectations as it chases a spot in the top flight.

Connell praised his players for a “gritty” effort during which they laid about 130 tackles.

Tullamarine also lost three players during the game and had 17 on the field for the last 10 minutes.

“We said that’s the benchmark now,” Connell said.

“So anything less than what we dished up probably won’t be accepted.

“That’s pretty much the trademark of how we want to go about it. We want to be defensively strong and I think we scored heavily in the second half based on probably some of our pressure and defensive stuff throughout the game.”

Ruckman David Scott, who has returned to the club after a season away, starred in his first appearance of 2019, giving his midfielders first use.

His inclusion also allowed Adam Scott to move to the forward half.

“He hadn’t played since the last game of 2017,” Connell said.

“He has been training since November and he’s done the work, but he broke his hand in an intra-club game and didn’t play any of the practice matches.

“Just his leadership and experience through the middle, I think it made the rest of the guys walk a little bit taller as well.”

Recruits Anthony Liberatore, Blair Cronin and Joel Bonnici also rediscovered some of their best form after slow starts to the year.

“It’s taken a few weeks for those guys to come in and click,” Connell said.

Connell was elated with Tullamarine’s defensive display after it conceded an average of 107 points in the opening fortnight.

With Russell Laurie and Craig Steele no longer present in the back half after retiring last season, others have had to fill the void.

“We probably had some questions asked of us in the first couple of rounds,” Connell said.

“I was really confident we could cover those losses, but we’ve done a lot of work on our transition and attacking side of the game and we probably got that balance a little bit wrong.

“I thought we finally got that balance right (against West Coburg) with a few things we tweaked over the pre-season from last year.”

The Demons will meet Taylors Lakes at home in Round 4.

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