Adelaide, South Australia would be a turning point for our team as we had seven new players on our squad and our archrivals were on their home turf. We faced off against team South Australia in the opening round and they had a convincing win over us soundly beating us by 12 points 17-5.
We had 5 days to revamp our offense and defense and iron out some kinks from our first round robin game. The Championship game was in the balance and we had to come up big on day or go home with our tails between our legs.
We tweaked the team throughout the week by switching and trying new defenses schemes, Co-Coach Murray Keen was confident that his defense would be able to handle the fire power of the South Australian’s with simple slide packages that were adjacent and near slides rather than crease slides. On offense, in simple terms we had had to put more points onto the scoreboard than South Australia.
We knew that they were well coached and disciplined but we also knew that our long time rivalry would favor us in this decisive game.
Our team was able to establish an early lead with great midfield work both on defense and offense and we were able to set the tempo that best suited our style of game. We were able to go into the back half of the last quarter in total control of the clock and tempo and the guys never looked like quitting. I couldn’t be more proud of a complete team effort.
Victoria has now won 5 National Championships in a row…”this one was as good as it gets.”
Co-Coach Glen Meredith
Team Victoria, 2011
