CASEY coach Justin Plapp reviews the Melbourne-listed players who played in the VFL

VFL

Saturday, June 20, Eureka Stadium, 1pm

North Ballarat 11.2 (68) d Casey Scorpions 6.12 (48)

“AS POORLY as we played, we still had opportunities to be a lot closer. We felt that if we had have won the game, it would’ve been by default. North Ballarat was able to deliver a lot stronger contest. They were able to compete and we were second to the footy and very reactive. We were disappointed with the performance because it would’ve put us in the top four and third on the ladder. It would’ve set our season up really well, but now we’re just sitting in the eight. At the half-way point, we’re five [wins] and four [losses] and we’re really going to have to fight to get ourselves into finals contention or to finish in the top eight. It was our worst and most disappointing performance for the year.” – Justin Plapp

Jack Fitzpatrick: We thought that Fitzy was probably our best player. After missing last week due to injury, and having played three games in a row before that in the AFL, over the course of the game we thought he was probably our best player. He competed really well and played on one of North Ballarat’s key forwards in Aaron Black, who had been kicking a lot of goals for them. But he kept him pretty quiet. Fitzy ended up having 28 possessions, two tackles and 11 marks, eight of which were from opposition kicks. So he won a lot of aerial ball and defended really well, so he was our best player on the weekend.  

James Harmes: Harmesy was given the job on Ryan Bastinac, who was North Ballarat’s player. He was pretty compliant for most of the game, but Harmesy lost his way a bit on Bastinac and probably stopped playing the role we needed him to. Harmesy has been pretty good for two or three weeks and on the weekend, it wasn’t one of his best performances. He had six effective tackles and 21 possessions. Bastinac certainly won that battle for sure.

Mark Jamar: Mark once again dominated hit outs and dominated the centre clearance, but unfortunately for our midfielders we didn’t take full advantage of that. He ended up having six tackles, 13 disposals and six marks. We try and really encourage our ruckmen to get involved around the ground a little bit more, so we were really happy with his output. He’s playing his role every week. With the AFL team winning and Max Gawn playing well and Jake Spencer playing up forward, Mark just needs to keep ticking off the numbers, which he has done in the last two or three weeks, so he was one of our better players.  

Jay Kennedy-Harris: Jay lifted his ground time this week and had a lot of the football, playing wing/half-forward. He had 27 possessions, five effective tackles and kicked 2.3. He really could’ve really hurt the scoreboard and finished with a decent score, but missed a couple of opportunities. He’s putting his name up for senior selection, whether that’s the next round after the bye or very soon. Overall, he increased his game time, his output and he was very solid.

Max King: Kingy got a bit of a wake-up call, after kicking five goals in his first senior VFL match for the year last week. He played on a really good defender, Joel Tippett, who is big-bodied and good in one-on-one contests. Kingy found it really hard at times to get off him, but I don’t think our delivery or the way we sent the ball inside 50 really helped him. As the game went on, he launched at the footy and ended up with 13 possessions, four marks, a goal and two effective tackles. For a kid who played really well the previous week, it was a bit of a wake-up call, but that’s part of his development. It was more of a positive than a negative and overall, he’s going pretty well.

Oscar McDonald: Oscar has developed and matured over the last three of four weeks, but we felt he lowered his colours on the weekend. He wasn’t as strong in some one-on-one situations, but he’s a young kid and like many developing players, he’s going to be inconsistent at times. We’ve just got to keep working with Oscar and make sure he gets back to being physical. It wasn’t his best performance on the weekend, like a number of other players.

Viv Michie: Viv came back from the AFL and had 21 possessions and nine effective tackles. It probably wasn’t his best game. He was a little bit slow to react defensively and made a couple of critical errors, when he had the ball in his hand. It was probably one of his poorest performances at VFL level this season and he needs to bounce back and put his name into AFL contention in the next two or three weeks. We’re working really hard with him.

Dean Terlich: Terls was another one we were disappointed with. We played him in a different position on the weekend and he struggled to get into the game in the first half. We put him back to half-back and he looked a lot more comfortable there and he seemed to play his better football there. He ended up having 13 possessions and four effective tackles. We didn’t have a lot of output from him on the day.

Mitch White: Whitey was a bit like Oscar McDonald. He was challenged pretty strongly after half-time on the weekend. Whitey was given a role on one of their really important smalls, former Bulldog Andrew Hooper. He got away from his role and what he Whitey had been doing really well for the previous few weeks. Whitey got distracted from what we needed him to do, even though he had three tackles and 14 possessions, Hooper ended up kicking three goals. He’s been another of our kids who has been really good for four or five weeks, like Oscar, but both of them lowered their colours on the weekend, but that’s part of being developing footballers.

AFL Victoria Development League

Saturday, June 20, Piranha Park, 11 am

Coburg 12.11 (83) d Casey Scorpions 9.8 (62)

No Melbourne-listed players featured in the Development League