Exciting young Great Southern Storm team named to compete at annual Great Southern Colts Carnival

The Great Southern Storm will field an exciting young group that are ready to challenge the best teams at the long-running Great Southern Colts Carnival in Lake Grace this weekend. The Storm will be representing the Great Southern Football League in the eight-team competition and Claremont games record holder and highly-successful coach Darrell Panizza is in charge of the talented squad. A final squad of 28 players will make the trip to the carnival, with 25 set to play across the three matches unless injury or COVID strikes. State 16s player Lucas Ravenhill will not be part of the Storm side because of his WA commitments but Panizza is confident his team can challenge for a grand final spot. “This is about developing kids, of course we want to go away and win the carnival but it’s about developing kids and giving them the opportunity to progress so if they do want to go and play footy in Perth they’ve got that opportunity to showcase themselves,” Panizza said. “The carnival is like putting your hand into a bag of mixed lollies, until you get to the carnival, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. “I think what we’ve done has captured kids who are in good form who are playing in their positions, we don’t want to force kids to play in spots that they’re not used to. “I can’t wait, I think we’ve got a really exciting young group and hopefully they perform to their true ability.” The carnival will feature teams from Lower South West, Peel, Ongerup, Esperance, Eastern Districts, Goldfields and Upper Great Southern. The Storm will face Ongerup in their first match on Saturday at 9.30am and a win will see them progress to a virtual semifinal on Saturday afternoon. The two teams that are unbeaten at the completion of Saturday’s two rounds of fixtures will meet in the grand final at 1pm on Sunday. “At the end of the day, winning isn’t everything but I don’t like losing,” Panizza said. “I hope all the players go away and just embrace it because we’re representing our region. I think all those players have the qualities because they wouldn’t have been picked if they didn’t.” Royals have the largest representation in the final squad with 10 players while Railways have seven selected. Great Southern Storm Team Max Baker, Gus Bockman, Jake Shepherd, Connor McCandless (Albany), Todd Brown (Denmark-Walpole), Josh Davenport, Ben Kirkwood, Sebastian Ballard (Mt Barker), Kobi Keen, Drew Willcocks, Kiya Jellay (North Albany), Mohit Jaggi, Ryley Valli, Colby Law, Clay Michael, Isaac Williams, Lachlan Cale, Tom Gawned (Railways), Ryan Lazar, Saxon Henrickson, Blake Panizza, Rory Luscombe, Lorcan McNamara, Joley Graham, William Cousins, Teague Valli, Jordan Hulm, Ben Altus (Royals)