SFNL: Springvale Districts broke its three-match losing streak with a ‘massive’ win over East Brighton

Three consecutive losses forced Springvale Districts into a must-win match against East Brighton, but it was a position coach Kris Thompson wanted to see his side deliver in.

Sean Downie of East Brighton tackles Daniel Helmore of Springvale Districts. (Photo by Josh Chadwick)

Springvale Districts didn’t want to bounce back against a lesser side, it “wanted to beat a contender”.

The Demons had dropped their past three matches against Cheltenham, St Paul’s McKinnon and Cranbourne, and felt they needed a scalp to get back on track.

Saturday’s clash with East Brighton was exactly what they were searching for.

Resembling a final, a loss would’ve had Springvale Districts outside the four but a win would create a six-point buffer between it and sixth.

Daniel Helmore fights away from a Sean Downie tackle. (Photo by Josh Chadwick)

The Demons delivered and coach Kris Thompson said the 15.9 (99) to 12. 11 (83) win was “massive” for his side’s finals aspirations.

“If you’re going to make finals, you’ve got to beat teams in a similar position on the ladder,” he said.

“We’ve been able to beat them twice, which puts us six points ahead of them.

“If we had of lost we would’ve been two points behind them – it was massive.

“We did a lot of training on our ball movement during the week, got some vision, we saw what we don’t want to see and trained for what we do want to see.

“We’ve had a tough stretch but it was what we wanted, we didn’t want to come up against one of the bottom teams and beat them, we wanted to beat a contender.

“It was a good game of footy, a good standard, good crowd, all three teams won which was good for the club.”

Springvale Districts is now six points clear inside the top six. (Photo by Josh Chadwick)

Tom Lamb booted seven goals for East Brighton. (Photo by Josh Chadwick)

Helmore, who Thompson said “deserves attention”, managed to kick three goals against a heavy tag.

Thompson was pleased with how Helmore fought through the match up to be among the best players on the ground.

“He’s been brilliant, he was heavily tagged and he was able to work his way through that,” he said.

“He played through the mid and then went forward at times as he does and kicked a few goals and set up a few more – he’s such a hard match up.

“He copped a lot of attention but I am really proud of him because he didn’t let it affect him and he was the best player on the ground outside of probably Tommy Lamb who was really hard to stop.”

Springvale Districts is expecting to get a few more players back, including star forward Matt Wetering, in the back half of the year.