AFTER three wins on the trot, the Northern Bullants were upset by the Werribee Tigers by 16 points at Princes Park on Sunday.

Coach David Teague reviews the match.

We didn’t play good footy for most of the day, but I was pleased with the way the boys were at least able to fight the game out even though we copped a few injuries along the way.

We kicked the first goal of the last quarter and gave ourselves a chance, but they did enough to hold on.

James Podsiadly hurt us with eight goals, but it was more the delivery to him that concerned me. The ball was coming in without a lot of pressure from our midfield which put our defenders under the pump.

It was definitely disappointing because we played against a team that was probably a little bit hungrier than us; they turned up ready to play.

I don’t know whether we went in with a 3-1 win-loss mentality versus a 1-3 mentality, but they just got off to a better start and won the ball early on.

Our starts, pressure and intensity are the major areas that we’ll be working on at training. Of the games we’ve won we’ve been very good in those areas, but that’s where we’ve dropped away in the games we’ve lost.

Unfortunately, Ryan Jackson and Dennis Armfield both got injured in the second quarter; Jackson hurt his hand and Armfield did his hamstring. Simon Wiggins and Joey Anderson couldn’t go in the last either, so it was a good effort for the boys to hang in there without a bench.

Cain Ackland looked dangerous up forward for us and kicked a couple of goals and took a couple of good marks.

Shaun Hampson was back from injury and had about 10 handballs and got better as the game went on. Anderson played in the backline in the first three quarters and defended really hard and laid some strong tackles.

It was a chance for us to go into the bye at 4-1 which is a big difference to where we are now -- 3-2 and back in the pack. If we had have won, we would have been up among the top few teams and set ourselves up to get a few boys back from injury.

But you can’t dwell on it. The younger boys that don’t get picked for Carlton this week will have a weekend off and then we’ll get stuck into preparing for Casey.

It’s a long season so the bye is a good chance for the VFL squad to freshen up a bit. They’ll get Saturday, Sunday and Monday off and then we’ll be back into training on Tuesday for the next week’s match against the Scorpions.

Northern Bullants   3.5  5.7  8.10  12.15 (87)
Werribee Tigers   6.3  10.5  13.9  15.13 (103)

GOALS:
Northern Bullants: Colbert 3, Ackland 2, Bransgrove 2, Jackson,  Lappin, O'hAilpin, Ellard, Teague
Werribee Tigers: Podsiadly 8, Davies, Ross, Riggio, Obst, Gleeson, Barlow, Warren

BEST:
Northern Bullants: Bransgrove, Ackland, Boundy, Iacobucci, Colbert, Hampson
Werribee Tigers: Podsiadly, Ross, Castello, Eddy, Davies, Riggio

The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the club.