Dev: Hawks Fly Over the Blues in the Final Stages

Hawks stormed over the Northern Blues in the second-half at Preston City Oval today to claim victory by 42 points.

The Hawks skills and focus in the second-half proved unstoppable.

Box Hill came out strong, scoring in the first seconds of the bounce. Shortly after, a mistake by a Hawks player resulted in a goal for the Blues.

This was the beginning of what would be a very back and forth half.

An unexpected goal from Gibson, racing down the field from the back line, helped decrease the margin to 20 points at the end of the first quarter.

The score showed the Hawks had plenty of work to do in order to catch up and take control of the game.

Although goals off both Traynor and Tatupu helped keep Box Hill in the game, it wasn’t enough to get on top by half time, Blues leading by 14 points.

“At half time we came in and talked about going in hard and aggressive. We needed to move the ball better, create space through the midfield, giving our forward line the best opportunity,” said Franetic.

The words were closely followed by the players, as they came back onto the field as a completely different team.

Dimasi was the first to get the ball rolling, scoring a running goal followed by quick goals by Franetic and Traynor, taking the Hawks lead to 12 points.

Blues showed no signs of giving up matching Franetic and Langford’s next goals.

Hawks went into the final term with an 11 point lead. The way they were moving the ball had given them full control of the game.

It began obvious that if Frantic got the ball in the Hawks forward 50, there would be no stopping him. He ended the day with five goals, four of those in the second half.

The scores after the final siren showed the efforts of the Hawks in the final stages, scoring 13 out of 17 of their goals in the second-half.

Franetic put the win down to team work and playing selflessly.

“We came together really well as a team. We backed each other up and got behind each other. That’s what footy is about.”

Frantic said the Hawks can come away from the win “knowing that we have the ability to come back from adversity, through team work and trusting our abilities and knowledge of the game”.

The Hawks will head back to training this week and re focus for next weeks clash against Sandringham.

 

Box Hill Hawks: 2.2  4.4  11.6 17.9 (111)

Northern Blues: 5.4 6.6 9.7 10.9 (69)

Goals: Franetic 5, Traynor 3, Jones 2, Kidd, Burt, Soccio, Langford, Dimasi, Tatupu, Gibson,