The Yass Kangaroos went down by what is two goals and two behinds on the weekend, but it isn’t all bad news for one of the most youthful teams in the comp.
“We had a 14 point loss at the weekend at the hands of the mighty Woden Blues,” said Steve May.
“Woden are the benchmarks in the competition. They’ve won the last two premierships, and they are undefeated.
“That was the second meeting we’ve had this year. They beat us by one point the first time and then they beat us by 14 points on the weekend.
“Last year for perspective, they beat us by 112 points, so we feel like we’ve closed the gap considerably, but we’ve still got a little bit more work to do, and that’s all right, there’s still time and it looks like we’re going to finish in 3rd spot on the ladder.
“It is a massive achievement for the club to make the finals for the first time in this division, and only our second year in this division – AFL Canberra Community Men’s Division One.
“Yass has always played in Division 2 and this is our second year in Division One.
Going up a level and looking like securing 3rd place and only having a loss of one point and 14 points against a side that beat them by over 100 last year is a huge turnaround.
“We were thrilled with our first season last year. We were really competitive, just missed the finals.
“It looks like we’ve really improved on that and right in the mix this year. We are pretty happy with where we are at, but now that we’ve come this far, we want to go all the way, obviously, so we are going to be working really hard to go all the way this year.
“I think improving this year is coming from a few different areas. We picked up a few recruits, which has been handy, but we’re such a young squad. So even last year, I think towards the end of the season, 16 of our 22 were 22 or younger, so a really young squad, especially for this competition where a lot of the sides have got a few old veterans in the team. We are a very, very young side, so there’s just a lot of natural improvement from last year and the exciting thing is that we’ll continue if we can keep this squad together, that’ll continue over the next few years.
“The challenge this year has been, we just haven’t been able to get close to having our best side on the paddock.
Again, on the weekend, we were missing four or five starting players, plus, we had a heap of bad luck during the game.
We had one of our guys do his knee in the first quarter. We’re waiting to hear back on the results of the scans there, but it looks like it could be a bit of a nasty one. And then one of our co-captains nicked his quad in the first quarter as well. We were down to two on the bench for basically the whole second half, and in fact, one on the bench for most of the second half.
“We were pushing it uphill, but we hung in there. We know that Woden were missing a few as well, but we feel like there’s still a lot of upside this season for us.
“If we get our full team together, we think we can give it an almighty shake in the finals.
I think it might actually work a little bit in our favour that Woden’s beaten us twice this year, because I just don’t think Woden really sees us as a serious threat.
“I’m the ripe old age of 51 this year. I’m a little bit past it, but I’m keeping active to play some masters, but I’m happy just to run around with the boys on the training track at the moment.
“I played a lot of footy with the Gungahlin Jets back in the day and coached a lot of juniors there as well. And then my son and a bunch of his mates chose to play their senior footy out at Yass, just a friendship decision. They wanted to just stick together and play footy together and they’re loving that. There’s a few of them who should definitely be playing footy at a higher level that have the capability to do that, but there’s more to it than that and playing with your mates, they are having a lot of fun playing for Yass. It is a good community club and so I followed my son out there and stood on the sidelines for a year and then the opportunity came up to do some coaching, so I am co-coaching.”
The lady Roos have been hitting their straps also.
“The women beat Molonglo by a hefty margin the week before and then on the weekend they played against the top team, Woden, and they were soundly beaten. They’ve had a pretty tough year, I think they’ve only won the two games, but they are in their infancy. It’s only their second year in the comp, there’s a lot of girls in the side who haven’t played much footy before. They are just building and it’s coming together nicely. Harry’s doing a great job as coach, that’s Caitlin Dobing.
“We are up against it because in this competition, for example, Woden on the weekend, they’ve got a squad of about 80 players because they’ve got two teams. We’re playing against their 1st grade side. We’ve got a squad of 30. No seconds putting pressure on our first graders. So, it’s a challenge. It’s not really a level playing field, but I’m really happy with the way we’re going, considering all of that. We play Goulburn at home. That’s our final home and away game for the year. It’s going to be a big day out at Joe O’Connor Park. We’ve got Old Boys’ Day and Ladies’ day and then we’ve got a bye, and then into the finals, and it looks like we’re probably going to finish third, which means we will get a home final, 3rd versus 4th at Yass, which is pretty exciting the second weekend in August. That’ll be huge if we get that home final against ADFA, probably.
“AFDA’s skill level could change, but the fitness is always good. It is the same with the footy, they’ve got huge numbers. They are very fit, very disciplined, but I think we’ve got a little bit of skill, class advantage over them.
We beat them by 8 points a few weeks ago, so it is pretty close. We are looking forward to that, cracking in for a final.”
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