By Paul Pickering
DANDENONG was too big, too fit and too professional for an undermanned Northern Territory at Shepley Oval on Saturday.
The Territory boys chased and harassed their way into the lead midway through the second term, only to be overrun in a second-half stampede as the Stingrays cruised to an 86-point victory.
Both sides went into the TAC Cup invitational clash at below full strength, with about a dozen Thunder players and seven Stingrays unavailable due to private school commitments.
The win was still worth four points to the Rays but coach Graeme Yeats moved quickly to prevent any back-slapping among his charges after the match.
The visitors made life difficult for their hosts early, when it became clear that speed and flair would be the Territory’s key weapons.
Mercurial forward Troy Taylor proved that when he booted two freakish goals – splitting the middle from either pocket – midway through the first term.
Size and strength was always going to be the Thunder’s problem, with starting full-back John Athanasiou giving away 16cm and 17kg to his direct opponent in Levi Casboult.
Casboult looked unstoppable up forward but the Thunder’s on-ball pressure made it difficult for the Rays to get it there fast enough to expose the mismatch.
Cooler heads prevailed in the dying minutes of the first half when Dandenong vice-captain Will Petropoulos marked a penetrating kick from skipper Ryan Bastinac and converted to give his side a 17-point advantage at the break.
The Territory boys failed to reproduce that energy after halftime and the frustration of chasing Stingray tails boiled over in a series of undisciplined acts in the third term.
Talented defender Madison Andrews was felled behind play twice but each incident resulted in a Dandenong goal.
The home side’s superior conditioning came to the fore in an eight-goal-to-one third quarter, and the exhausted Thunder troops were almost non-competitive in the fourth.
Given the question marks over the quality of opposition, it wasn’t surprising to hear Yeats deliver a sobering verdict after the match.
“I wasn’t overly rapped with the way we played,” Yeats said.
“I guess you think about an 80-point result and go, ‘wow, what a great win’, but there are a lot of areas that we can get better at.
“I thought we overused the ball early on and they (the Thunder) were a bit harder at the contested ball and the loose footy.”
Petropoulos, Andrews, Luke Parker and Mitch Hallahan were the notable exceptions to that assessment.
They all put their bodies on the line at the stoppages while Bastinac provided the polish with his 19 kicks and seven handballs.
Andrews produced the highlight of the match when he launched himself from three-deep in a marking contest to pluck a legitimate screamer on the grandstand wing.
Casboult, who starred for Frankston in the VFL the previous weekend, was the dominant player on the ground, whether it was up forward, in the ruck or at centre-half-back in the second half.
He took 13 marks for the afternoon, eight of them contested.
The Territory struggled to find consistent contributors but midfielders Scott Taylor and Roland Ah Chee and mobile ruckman Tim Kelly were among the most resilient.
Strong-bodied centre-half-forward Steven May was touted as the most likely AFL prospect of the bunch, but he was unable to impose himself on the contest.
Yeats believes his Stingrays will have to improve their intensity by around 20 per cent to match it with an unbeaten Eastern Ranges side from 1pm this Sunday at Shepley Oval.
