By Marcus Uhe
There are few better feelings in football than singing the song with your mates and supporters before cracking open a beer to replace the electrolytes lost in battle late on a Saturday afternoon.
As they walked off the field triumphant after an eighth-straight win, brothers Todd and Joel Garner posed for a photo in their first outing for the year together in red white and blue.
While Wandin shared in the spoils after Saturday’s contest, sheltering from the mountain chill and reliving the encounters that had just unfolded, the other side of the equation was dire.
A wounded and whacked Gembrook Cockatoo stayed on the field for a further five minutes reflecting on their performance, with the scoreboard in the background an emphatic reminder of what just transpired; a 163-point loss, in which the men in green were held goalless.
Brad Coller said it formed the beginning of the weekly review, following the “toughest” day he’s experienced in the coaches box.
“We’re pretty good at discussing our outcomes fairly brutally,” he said.
“A lot of our chats are 360; I don’t just get up there and preach, we talk about what we learned from the loss and that’s more on what they say.
“That’s pretty brutally honest and the boys, the majority of the time are pretty good at copping it and learning from it, and trying to fix it.”
Compounding matters was the loss of stars Josh Tilly and Jay Verhagen during the game to injuries, as well as Michael Firrito being ruled-out during the week, requiring the Brookers to delve into their depth.
Ice blocks were the most popular accessory after the game in both change rooms, but for vastly different outcomes.
Where the Bulldogs were keeping the beers cold, the visitors were using ice packs and bags as fashion accessories as the change-rooms resembled a casualty ward for a battalion of wounded soldiers.
“We had a few outs, which you can’t make too many excuses for, but when you’re playing the elite of the competition and they’re running around doing what they want, and you’ve got no bench after half time and injured players on the ground, I can’t really have a crack at them,” Coller said.
“I feel for the players, there wasn’t much more that they could have done.”
The visitors made a decent start to the contest in keeping the home side to just a single goal in the opening quarter.
It would have made for much better reading had they not been kicking with the wind.
There were ominous signs for Gembrook Cockatoo early in the contest as the site of Joel Garner linking with Pat Bruzzese through the middle of the ground would have sent shivers down spines.
The Brookers brought the heat but the Bulldogs’ ability to chain with handballs out of trouble was reminiscent of their AFL equivalents back on the magical run to the promised land of 2016.
Joel Garner kicked his first of the game to break the Gembrook Cockatoo resistance late in the term, having broken away from a stoppage and snapped truly on his left.
Both sides were wasteful inside forward 50, and with the Brookers putting spares behind the ball, it left Myles Wareham often battling at a numbers disadvantage when his side did go forward.
Despite the wind calming in the second quarter, the onslaught from the home side was brutal.
If Gembrook-Cockatoo couldn’t win the ball at the contest, the Wandin spread almost guaranteed a score, or an entry at the very least.
From 23 forward 50 entries in the second quarter, the Bulldogs managed 16 shots on goal, to lead by 63 at the long break.
Extras behind the ball did little to stem the flow of goals as the aggressive ball use out of the back, from senior players such as Tilly and Brayden Baguley, often resulted in the ball going back over their heads.
Their want to use the corridor was not matched by their ability to hit targets, while anywhere within 60 metres of the goal became a firing range for the brutal Bulldogs, whose forward press and whole-ground defence was diabolical.
Tom Merlino’s snap deep in the forward pocket early in the third quarter was the first of the contest going into the wind, and continued the massacre.
When Tilly was helped from the ground after landing awkwardly in a marking contest and hurting his knee, it was a savage blow the battling visitors didn’t need, already 70 points down.
With fit bodies succumbing at a problematic rate of knots, Wandin’s ability to move the football was becoming easier and easier by the minute.
Garner’s third was a textbook example, as John Ladner and Cole Steiner combined deep in defence to switch the ball to the opposite pocket, before Garner finished on the run further afield.
When Gembrook Cockatoo did breach the defences, Wareham was smothered by multiple bodies without Verhagen riding shotgun.
Quite literally nothing was going right for Gembrook Cockatoo.
To rub salt into a literal wound, Wareham was penalised for taking too long to get off the ground, after the game had paused due to him being sent from the field under the blood rule.
The turnover at Wandin’s half-forward line resulted in another goal as the margin threatened the 100-point barrier.
Three points shy at three-quarter-time, the incentive was obvious.
In Wandin’s last outing against Upwey Tecoma, the Bulldogs had the opportunity to really punish their opponents, but allowed four goals to one in the final term.
Nick Adam referenced this at the final break, with a desire to see a full four-quarter performance.
And a full four-quarter effort is exactly what he got.
Their most devastating quarter of them all came in the fourth, as they piled-on a further 10, which each major another crushing blow for an exasperated and exhausted Gembrook Cockatoo, fighting out of its weight division and undermanned.
A goal to Cody Hirst, in which he never fully took possession of the ball but simply directed a Drew Benson hit out down to his boot and hacked out of mid-air, was the ultimate insult to Coller’s side, who were simply out of answers.
“It was 120 minutes of the system and structure that we want to play with,” Adam said.
“We’ve had some wins this year where we’ve been better for ‘X’ amount of time and then we’ve gone away from it for periods, the way that we’ve been playing.
“I was really happy with the way that we were able to set the ground up, and the way we moved the footy across the day.
“It was 90 minutes of footy against Upwey Tecoma and we talked at three-quarter-time about finishing the game, and we didn’t.
“For the last quarter, our shape was good and when we got it, we played the way we wanted to.
“We train a lot, we talk about it a lot, and today we executed it for 120.”
Garner finished the contest with six goals, a handy addition for a side already chocked-full with midfield brilliance and a near embarrassment of riches.
But his work around the contest benefited his fellow midfielders and allowed them to get off the chain.
“We talked a lot about being able to pivot off Joel through the midfield,” Adam said.
“He’s so strong that he’s going to get first hands a lot, that some of the traditional ball-winners win for us, and we wanted them to get on the outside and feed off him.
“They’re ball-winners, Bruzzesse, (Cody) Hirst, (Chayce) Black, Todd Garner, if they get it on the outside and get shoulders out, then we’re getting good outcomes out of that.”
The win means Wandin have completed a clean sweep of the field, having played every side now and coming away with an unblemished record.
But the season is long, and Adam is not letting the run of form get to his players’ head.
“We need to strive to be better each week,” Adam said.
“We know that we’re going to be playing finals, but we need to be playing our best footy and we need to be playing better than what it is now, against sides that are better than what we came up against today as well.
“We lost a preliminary final that we thought we were going to win last year, and it burns in my guts.
“We referenced it over the summer around the need to be better, and when we get to that position again with that opportunity, that we’re going to be better and more prepared.”
For Gembrook Cockatoo, the bye comes at both an ideal time to get some recovery into the injured brigade, while worryingly affording the opportunity for such a disastrous loss to fester before retaking the field against Monbulk.
“We had a good win against them last time and they’re in a similar situation to us, with guys going overseas and being let down by a few people,” Coller said.
“It should be a good game, and whoever turns up and wants it the most, wins that game.”
