Eagles out for clean sweep

By Mark Gullick
CRANBOURNE travels to Rowley Allen Reserve on Saturday – with their eyes set on creating history.
The Eagles are aiming to go through the home-and-away season undefeated.
“We haven’t spoken much about it,” Cranbourne coach Doug Koop said. “Realistically, there’s only one thing we’re trying to achieve and if we do that by being undefeated, then so be it.
“On paper, they’ve got some quality players, but for whatever reason, they just haven’t been able to put it together for four quarters.
“They’d like to have a crack playing the ladder leaders. They’re losing their coach, so there is a lot of emotion going into their last home game. We’ve just got to go out there switched on and ready to go.”
In the last month, Cranbourne has defeated fourth-placed Berwick by 123 points, second-placed Narre Warren by 57 points and were 124 points too good for fifth-placed Pakenham last Saturday.
The Eagles are simply unstoppable. They annihilated the fading Lions with a comprehensive display at Casey Fields on Saturday.
The Eagles recovered from a slow start, where they conceded the opening three goals, with the next 14 goals.
“It was a slow start, we gave a couple of dumb free-kicks away,” Koop said.
“Three of the first four goals were from free-kicks. It’s a good sign, we’d like to be on our game from the start, but if we aren’t, we have the ability to turn things around.”
Cranbourne’s inaccuracy has been an on-going issue for Koop with the Eagles’ season goalkicking efficiency at just 57 per cent.
Jarrod Murphy kicked five goals, while Curtise Barker, Caleb Tiller and Ryan Jones were prominent in the midfield.
Meanwhile, down the road a bit, Devon Meadows host the rampaging Narre Warren in its final match of the season.
The Magpies are coming off a league-record score of the season, while the Panthers will claim the wooden spoon in coach Rod Keogh’s first year.