Storm confidence grows after solid Kulin carnival
Great Southern Storm head coach Glynn Verbruggen believes his side learnt a number of valuable lessons from one poor quarter at the Great Southern Colts Carnival in Kulin at the weekend, which ended their hopes of reaching another grand final.
A disappointing second term against the Peel Cavaliers on Saturday crushed the Storm’s hopes of making an eighth straight decider at the annual carnival but they rebounded strongly to beat Ongerup and then Goldfields and finish in third place.
Two wins and three competitive quarters against the eventual winners have Verbruggen upbeat ahead of next month’s Landmark Country Football Championships. “We set ourselves a really good base to push towards Landmark,” he said after his first carnival in charge of the Storm group.
“We played one bad quarter of footy out of 12, which is a good effort from a young group.
“That lapse in concentration and skill level in one quarter cost us a place in the final and the boys will learn from that. It was super-pleasing (the response), against a strong Peel side, but our aim and ambition is to be beating the likes of Peel in the future.”
The Storm started brightly, with the first two goals of their clash with Peel but conceded the next eight goals of the match to fall well behind.
Peel were completely dominant in the second term, kicking 5.7 and starving Storm of the ball in their attacking half.
Storm produced a spirited fightback as they kicked seven goals in the last half and reduced the deficit to seven points at one stage in the final term before going down by 21 points.
Knocked out of contention for the grand final, Storm responded with an emphatic statement against Ongerup to win by 199 points and then downed Goldfields by 36 points in the third and fourth play-off on Sunday to give the side plenty of confidence heading to the Landmark championships, July 5-8 in Perth.
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