Seniors’ Finals Hopes Dashed by Pies

Saturday’s Round 20 clash against Collingwood saw our Senior team defeated by 21-points at Box Hill City Oval, effectively ending our potential 2016 finals campaign.

Although the Hawks were able to get within 14-points of the Pies in the last quarter, they were unable to convert late scoring opportunities and walked away without four crucial points.

Skill errors proved costly for the Hawks in the first-half, gifting Collingwood with plenty of goal-scoring opportunities. The Hawks ball use moving forward also proved costly, as they only managed 2 goals for the first half.

The Hawks also recorded 18 missed tackles for the half, allowing Collingwood’s ball carriers to move more freely across the ground and go into the major break 28-point leaders.

The second half saw Box Hill return with renewed effort and displayed their determination to come out winners.

With a massive 26 tackles to Collingwood’s 6, and 20 inside 50s to their 7, the final term saw the Hawks in their best form of the day.

However, Box Hill’s inaccuracy in front of goal proved too costly, unable to capitalise kicking one goal and six behinds in the last quarter.

Box Hill Vice-Captain Sam Iles, one of the Hawks’ best players for the game, spoke to boxhillhawks.com.au about the disappointing loss.

“Obviously it was a disappointing result today and it’s very disappointing to know that our best footy can compete with the best clubs in the VFL but we won’t be there in the finals to show it.”

“We had so many turnovers in the first-half and we weren’t playing our brand of footy. Our effort was lacking in the first-half and we were just making silly mistakes.”

“We did play much better in the second-half and got back to playing the footy we wanted to but I think we cost ourselves in the first-half with our turnovers. We just didn’t make the most of our scoring opportunities.”

In the last game of the season, the Box Hill Hawks will take on the Casey Scorpions at City Oval on Saturday 27^th August.

 

FINAL SCORE

Box Hill:        2.4  2.5  5.9  7.15  (57)

Collingwood:  4.1  7.2  10.5  12.6  (78)

 

GOALS

Box Hill: T. O’Brien 2, B. Hardwick 2, R. Schoenmakers, K. Stewart, S. Switkowski

Collingwood: T. Cloke 4, J. Collopy 2, C. Gault, J. Kelly, T. Golds, J. Witts, A. Indovino, M. Cox

 

DISPOSALS

Box Hill: S. Iles 36, J. O’Rourke 30, K. Lovell 28, D. Mirra 26, A. Litherland 26, M. O’Donnell 24

Collingwood: J. Kelly 27, T. Golds 23, N. Gray 23, R. Pendlebury 20

 

BEST

Box Hill: S. Iles, A. Litherland, J. O’Rourke, K. Lovell, D. Mirra, T. O’Brien

Collingwood: R. Pendlebury, T. Golds, N. Gray, J. Collopy, A. Toovey, G. Borthwick

 

Photo: Kadek Thatcher Photography