THE NORTHERN Bullants, Carlton's VFL affiliate, dropped back to three wins and three losses for the season after a 118-point loss to Casey Scorpions on Sunday.

Assistant coach Matthew Lappin shares his thoughts on the match and gives a summary of how some of the senior-listed players performed.

What can you say about a loss like that? We didn’t play very well and Casey was outstanding. They had a much stronger side in than us, but to lose by that margin was not good enough.

They dominated possession from the stoppages even though we had two really good ruckmen in Cain Ackland and Shaun Hampson dominate the hit-outs. We got smashed at the clearances; they had 100 extra possessions on the day which is the equivalent of five extra midfielders. And they had nearly double the amount of inside 50s, so we got slaughtered there too.

It’s a bit of a speed hump, no doubt, but we’ve copped a few injuries at Carlton which does filter down to the reserves and we’ve got a few injuries of our own with some of our Bullants players sidelined. We’re going through a bit of a flat spot in terms and we could have copped a loss, but not to that sort of margin.

As for the better-performed Carlton-listed players, we had a really good result from one of our young tall defenders Mark Austin. He’s only in his second year and he probably played his best game for the club. He defended really well and did a lot of team-oriented things and he was also used going the other way, finishing with about 20 possessions which is a pretty good effort for a tall defender.

Joey Anderson was the other one worthy of a mention. He was beaten pretty comprehensively in the first half, but showed real spirit to be an outstanding player in the second. He was fired up and he led the way with a really good performance.

We probably only had a couple of winners on the day, so there were lot of guys unhappy with their performances. There were too many who just weren’t committed enough and it stood out pretty obviously on the tape during the review.

But even when you get a result as bad as that, you can’t get too emotional as a coach. We’re here to educate and develop the players, so you’ve just got to remain reasonably calm after the match and go about finding a way to make it a learning experience.

As disappointing as it was, we addressed it pretty quickly; we played on Sunday then came in on Monday morning and spoke with the players about it. We addressed and talked about how it was unacceptable and then the next day we looked at the video footage from an educational point-of-view, so by Tuesday it had been put behind us.

These days the video review is an integral part of developing young footballers. Teaguey and I watch the whole game and take clips out of it as we go along, the good and the bad, which we can show the boys to help educate them.

We don’t watch the whole thing as a group, because if you meet with all the boys for more than half-an-hour or so they can lose their focus, so we tend to keep it short and sweet.

Also, there’s no point putting the boys through a whole game like that one, so we just pick out the stuff that we think will be beneficial for them.

But we’ve put a full stop behind that and we’ve got to rebound against North Ballarat who are the top side on the ladder – a great challenge for us.

The boys did a great job against them last year and I’m sure they’ll be pretty pumped up for a bit of revenge. Having said that, there will be a more spirited performance from the Bullants this week because the boys really want to atone for what happened on Sunday.

Northern Bullants   0.2   1.5   4.8   6.10 (46)
Casey Scorpions   4.3   13.9   16.9   25.14 (164)

Northern Bullants
Goalkickers: P. Colbert 2, D. Teague, M. Lappin, S. Hampson, A. Joseph
Best players: M. Austin, J. Anderson, A. Iacobucci, C. Ackland, M. Lappin, D. Boundy

Casey Scorpions
Goalkickers: M. Ferguson 7, J. Steven 3, M. Rix 2, L. Fisher 2, S. Garrubba 2, J. Blake, A. McQualter, J. Wall, C. Dunne, S. O'Bryan, J. Allen, J. Geary, B. McEvoy, C. Jones
Best players: M. Ferguson, C. Jones, A. Silvagni, J. Wall, J. Blake, J. Taylor

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