Diggers Rest claims all five football and netball games against Wallan

Diggers Rest produced a five-star performance on Saturday, winning all five games across football and netball against arch rival Wallan.

Mitch Jensen in action for Diggers Rest. Picture: Aaron Cook

It was a five-star day for Diggers Rest on Saturday.

The Burras completed a clean sweep of arch rival Wallan across five games of football and netball at Bloomdale Oval.

A clinical 40-point win in the seniors and 17-point victory in the reserves sees Diggers jump to the top of the RDFL ladder in both grades and ends Wallan’s unbeaten start to the season.

The hosts also claimed 54-36, 32-21 and 31-18 in the three grades of netball to complete a perfect day.

In the main game, dominant performances from Mitch Day (five goals) and Mitch Jensen (three goals) inspired Diggers Rest.

Taylor Hine in action for Diggers Rest. Picture: Aaron Cook

The Burras extended the lead at every change to claim a 15.9 (99) to 8.11 (59) victory.

Coach Jamie Lobb said his team had been looking forward to facing the undefeated Magpies.

“They’re being touted as the best in the comp so it was all about the challenge for us,” he said.

“It was about going out there and taking it up to the best team in the comp and seeing if we could match it with them, we enjoyed the challenge and we came out on top.”

Off-season recruits Day and Jensen have been key factors in Diggers Rest’s impressive start to the season.

Day has 27 goals for the season and Jensen 25 majors to sit third and fourth respectively behind Wallan pair Matt Perri and Corey Grindlay.

In a major win for the Burras, Perri was kept goalless and Grindlay kicked just one goal in a rare failure for the pair.

Ryan Mullen was named best on ground as he kept reigning Bowen Medallist Ricky Schraven quiet.

Luke Delahey in action for Diggers Rest. Picture: Aaron Cook

“Ryan went head-to-head with Ricky all day and kept his impact to a minimum and got his hands on the footy himself,” Lobb said.

“We wanted to let him run around with one of the best players in the comp so it was a good learning curve for him and he applied himself really well.

“The back six did really well to keep their (Perri and Grindlay) impact down.

“The pressure from up the field from the mids made it easier for the backs to do their top.

“Mitch Day has been in some good goalkicking form and Jenno is still hitting the scoreboard but doing a lot of work thought the midfield as well.

“It’s a good position to be in, it would be hard to coach against us at the moment with the way the guys are playing.”

While content with a strong win over a premiership rival, Lobb said it would count for little come the end of the season.

Diggers Rest is still missing several key players with the likes of Jaidyn Caruana, James McMahon, Lachlan Ronaldson, Sean Egan, Marcus Calvaresi, Patrick Jackson and Tom Taylor to come back in.

Wallan will host Diggers Rest at Greenhill Reserve in the last game of the home-and-away season.

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“We’ll have a different looking side next time we play them, we had seven guys that didn’t play on Saturday that will hopefully be in the team,” he said.

“There’s definitely some quality to come back in so selection is going to be tough later in the year, which is a nice position to be in.”

The Burras will look to keep their winning form going when they host Western Rams on Saturday, while Wallan will look to bounce back against Macedon.

In other RDFL results, Romsey (61) were too strong for Woodend-Hesket (40), Macedon (130) had a big win over Western Rams (21) and Melton Centrals (95) hung on to beat Lancefield (81).