Geelong Advertiser | A FOCUS on the positives in the lead-up to Anglesea’s clash with the Demons was the catalyst to the Roos’ 24-point victory, according to coach Jason Armistead.
It had been a difficult fortnight for the Roos with two underwhelming performances, but the club elected to home in on what it has done well so far in 2015 to try and restore confidence to the group. And it reaped the rewards on Saturday afternoon.
“This week we’ve just focused on all the positive stuff that we’re capable of and that was our starting point this week,” Armistead said.
“We just concentrated on all the good things we’ve been able to do from the start of the year.
“We didn’t really address the last couple of weeks at all. We wanted to nearly forget about that and we just went back to enjoying playing football a little bit today as well.
“It’s pretty easy as a coach to keep dwelling on the things that we’re doing wrong but the majority of the time it’s not because of a lack of effort. It’s just where we are at as a group.
“All the positive things, sometimes you can forget about, so that’s why we just concentrated on that this week.”
The four points away from home was crucial for the Roos given the logjam of clubs through the middle of the ladder.
Anglesea had been having a wretched run but the club is looking to get its season rolling again.
“We’ve had a couple of pretty tough weeks where things didn’t go the way we wanted them to. We still didn’t play our best today either, but it was a good turning point I think,” Armistead said.
“Thursday night we even watched some footage of all our good play that we’ve produced during the year so far. We didn’t dwell on ... the past couple of weeks.”
“We will address some of those things down the track but for this week it was important just to come in with a bit of confidence.”
Anglesea started strongly and tightened their grip as the game went on, leading by eight points at the first break, then 14 at half time and 31 at three-quarter time.
The Demons had their best patch of football for the day to begin the last, closing the gap to just 12 points halfway through the term. But the visitors would settle and hold off any chance of a Portarlington revival, with Peter Hardy delivering the knockout blow.
