Carlton’s VFL affiliate, the Northern Bullants, bounced back from a 118-point loss to defeat league leaders North Ballarat by 42 points on the weekend. Coach David Teague shares his thoughts on the match and gives a summary of how some of the senior-listed players performed.

WHAT a turnaround; one week we got absolutely flogged and then we came out and had a good win against the top team.

It was a really good effort by the boys to regroup quickly and get back on the winners’ list; the fact that we just knuckled down and put four quarters together got us over the line.

We had a few minor changes, but it was pretty much the same personnel from last week. The boys lifted the intensity all over the field and just really came to play.

It was a very even contribution, we had some great players, but we also had everyone just continue to play their role throughout the day.

It was a bit of a daunting task to go up against the league leaders after a big loss, but it was a great opportunity to earn some pride and respect.

There’s no better team to come up against if you’re looking to prove that you can still play at this level and whether we won or lost it was all about getting some respect back.

We got off to a good start against the breeze, which we haven’t been doing, and that put us in a good position. The second quarter was very tight with just one goal each, but it was the third quarter that was important; we put on five goals to two against the breeze which set up the game for us.

Everyone played their role, we stuck to the team structures pretty well and we finished the game with 95 tackles which is massive; it really illustrates the level of intensity and pressure that we were able to put on the opposition.

Darren Pfeiffer in the midfield was really good around the clearances and impressed with his pressure and tackling. Our back line was very good with Dennis Armfield, Mark Austin and Joey Anderson playing very tight on their opponents, defeating them and then giving us some great drive out of the back half.

We play Sandringham, who are coming off a 150-point win, next week so they’re going to provide another tough contest. They’ve won three of the last four premierships and they’ve still largely got the same playing personnel. They’ll actually get a few more Melbourne-listed players back from injury as well so it will be another good challenge for our group.

Northern Bullants: 4.1 5.3 10.8 16. 9 (105)
North Ballarat: 3.3 4.7 6.7 9.9 (63) 

Northern Bullants
Goal Kickers: J. Edwards 4, C. Benjamin 3, J. Bannister 2, A. Joseph 2, D. Teague, A. Iacobucci, P. Colbert, M. Austin, D. Ellard
Best Players: D. Pfeiffer, A. Iacobucci, D. Armfield, J. Anderson, J. Vansittart, M. Austin

North Ballarat
Goal Kickers: J. Spolding 2, B. Driscoll 2, R. Gregg 2, B. Grima, T. Roach, E. Sansbury
Best Players: B. Driscoll, T. Roach, S. Clifton, O. Stephenson, J. Spolding, M. Searl