Young Eagles bounce Burra

By Brad Kingsbury
BEACONSFIELD has a habit of rising to the occasion in big games at its home ground and that was very much the case in Saturday’s 25point win over Keysborough.
The youthladen Eagles recovered from an early onslaught that saw the Burra slam on six goals to one in the first 17 minutes of the game, to grind their way back and outrun a tiring and underdone opponent.
Keysborough coach Paul Jeffries conceded that the loss made a finals’ appearance by his vastly improved side highly unlikely.
He said that he would take a lead from rival mentor Haydn Robins and give the club’s talented youngsters some senior game time in the remaining five homeandaway games, with development for next season the aim.
“We aimed to win four games and we’ve won seven. I’m aiming to win nine games for the year now,” he said.
“We’ve gone from being down the bottom last year and the club is happy with the improvement, but we need to keep developing the young kids now. We can take a lesson from Beaconsfield who have done that well this year.”
The match started at a furious pace and was an entertaining spectacle for the goodsized crowd that included many past Beaconsfield players who attended a club luncheon beforehand.
After the initial flurry, Beaconsfield settled well and won more ball in the midfield, providing opportunities to inform goalkickers Clint Evans and Luke McConnell, who shared 10 of the Eagles 19 goals for the afternoon.
The sides were separated by only two points at the final change, but Beaconsfield finished full of running and slammed on seven lastquarter goals to snare an important win.
The Eagles’ best included experienced trio Kris Fletcher, Chris Kelf and Daniel Mislicki and Robins said that, while there was a long way to go, he was pleased with his side’s development.
“It took us 10 or 15 minutes to settle, but once we did I thought our work rate was very good,” he said.
“It was physical, but no more than we expected. We’re still really young and we’re still light compared to most of our opposition, but all we ask is that they make a contest and be accountable and the scoreboard will look after itself. That was good today.
“We try pretty hard to lose footy games, but from a decisionmaking perspective we have developed and got better. We’re moving in the right direction,” Robins said.
Jeffries lamented playing Michael Davis and Warrick Hanks, both of whom carried injuries, but praised the effort of star fullforward Luke McGuinness who booted seven goals.
“They manned up better in the second quarter onwards and wanted the ball more. We went in a bit overconfident and it’s brought us back to reality,” he said.
“We played a couple of blokes we shouldn’t have, but in hindsight that’s no excuse.”