Warriors hack Miners

By Jarrod Potter
MONASH Warriors tore apart the Berwick Miners 55-0 in their clash on Sunday.
Monash scored at will, taking a 40-0 lead to half time before resting most of their starting line.
The offensive line of the Warriors was unstoppable, with running-back Lincoln Decker and quarterback Heath Decker controlling the play without much interjection from the Miners defence.
Lincoln Decker’s dominance was only halted when prior commitments forced him to leave the game at half time, with two touchdowns and more than 100 yards rushing to his name by that stage.
The Berwick Miners started to lift in the second half, once the Warriors started fielding their secondary backup players to give match experience.
The Miners continued to trudge on through the slop of Sydney Pargeter Reserve’s mud-ravaged surface, with quarterback Andrew Nixon going aerial to receiver Jesse Sporton to make some positive yardage and Berwick’s opening first down for the match.
Miners on defence, Sam Walker and Nick Pontil, fought hard to keep their opponents quiet, with both making score-stopping tackles and tipped a couple of would-be end-zone passes.
Berwick Miners’ coach Mel Martin drew parallels to the process the Gold Coast are going through in the AFL with where his inexperienced side is at.
“They’re rookie mistakes they make out there,” Martin said.
“I think we’ve got more rookies than the Gold Coast Suns, so I know where Guy McKenna is sitting at the moment.
“We made so many fundamental mistakes, silly mistakes that on any other day they wouldn’t make. We certainly don’t make them at training.”
While the errors are apparent to the coaching staff and players, Martin believes improvement is coming incrementally as the Miners gain valuable match experience.
“As long as we see improvement week to week, training session to training session and the attitude is still there, everything is still good,” he said.
“But they’ve just got to last the distance until they gain that experience that they don’t make these silly mistakes. Like the fumbles, bad snaps, drive killers, tackling a bloke around the shoulders.
“They will improve. We won’t have a winless season.”
The Miners travel to Cotchin Reserve to face the Bay City Buccaneers on Saturday.
“We come up this week against the Buccaneers, who lost to the Rangers by eight points. As long as we see improvement on all sides of the ball, we can go into our bye with a little more confidence,” Martin said.