Sam Ryan in his element. Photo Credits David Ingold D_M_Ingold_Images.
The Murrumbateman Eagles continue to slice through the competition in the 2025 season. After the weekend’s 15.9.99 – 5.7.37 win against the Woden Blues, the Eagles have sent a message to the rest of the competition, “This is ours to lose.”
Despite the team’s elite form, coach Andy Ingold refuses to count his chickens before they hatch. “It was a good win. It was a pretty tough first quarter, actually, but after a quarter time, they sort of got in and played the style that we wanted to play, and we ran away with it a bit.”
“We were expecting a good game of footy, and it was a good game. It was tough and we were preparing for that.
“Their midfield was pretty handy, they were quite disciplined going into their forward line as well. They were keeping theirs quite open.
“They were good across the park. Their midfield was pretty handy, but once our guys clicked into the gear after a quarter of the time, we took it right away.
“Jonathan Leayr, Jack White had a great game and Tom Rankin had his first game back since round one. He played well, took some really strong marks overhead, and they were just sticking to him.
“Matthew Bell kicked five this week. He also kicked five last week, so he’d be pushing it to be the leading goal kicker.
“They did say that it was probably the strongest team that they have fielded this year.
“They knew we were going to be their toughest game.
“At quarter time it was even. We had a bit of a chat at quarter time with the group and just told them to get back to how we play footy and go as a team and they did that and slipped away.
“The second quarter set them up for it and they started winning the ball out of the middle.
“The first quarter was a good contest, it was quite even and it wasn’t until the second quarter that they kicked away.
“We’ve got the bye this week. We’ve got the recorded so we will sit down and have a bit of a look at it with the team and see what we can do and have a bit of a runaround.
“It is a bit hard when you have a bye and then you play and then you have a bye. It’s the stop-start which makes it a bit difficult we have just got to keep on top of it and keep the boys running around.
“We’ve had a chat about a few things and it’s something that has been brought up, but as a group, we are not thinking too far in front of ourselves. We just take it week by week and finals are a different game. We will just do the home and away season. We’ve been quite lucky, touch wood, that we haven’t had any injuries. Anything can happen in a season, and as soon as a couple of injuries happen it can put things on its head, so we are just going to continue taking it week by week and go from there and I think they will be tough.
“We’ve still got ADFA and ANU in the mix before the end of the home and away season and we play Googong again as well.
“We’ve discussed it already (going up a division). If we can keep the same playing group, 100% we’d go up. There’s no two ways about it, and that’s something that I’m going to try and get from the group towards the end of the year, is commitment to the next year.
“Batemans Bay are going up and hats off to them, they’ve worked hard and got the facility down there to do it, and they will have a massive capturing area to be able to put a competitive side in up in that top premier division.
“They’ve been it for a few, and they’ve won it a couple of times, they’ve been in it longer than us, but they came to the Canberra comp from the Sapphire League, I think they were in. They’ve gone in leaps and bounds.
“I think culture is a massive thing within a footy club, it keeps players around both on and off the field. That’s a big thing if you’ve got a good culture, people want to come and play for your club.”
After this week’s bye, Murrumbateman will travel to Yass to play a home game against the Cootamundra Blues. Cootamundra currently sits stone motherless last upon the league table.
-Tully Potts
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