Weekly Wrap | Following on from the news last week of the new Maryborough Giants entity getting set for the 2024 season, there was even more season 2024 focussed news during this week.
Starting with the great news that Yea FNC, who have only been able to field junior football as well as their netball teams for the 2023 season have made positive steps for the 2024 season with senior coaching announcements made during this week. The Tigers are looking forward to continuing to plan for next year under the guidance of Mitch Skelly and Daniel Evans.
In the North East of the state Corowa Rutherglen FNC, who have been in recess this season, have formally applied for concessions for next year via an increase in salary cap and player points allocations. This move is aimed to help the club be able to plan further to rejoin the Ovens and Murray FNL next year. There was also a meeting during the week between members of the Corowa, Rutherglen, and Wahgunyah community to discuss their concerns for football and netball in the area where both Rutherglen FNC and Wahgunyah FNC are also struggling significantly onfield. It is still very much a ‘watch this space’ for these clubs when it comes to their potential outcomes in 2024.
Back to the current season and after all the dramatic off field action last week, it was back to a good old cold, wet and windy weekend for country footy across most of the state. As a result, there were several low scoring matches across most of the leagues with the Ovens and King FNL having an average 6 point winning margin across all their senior games. The Sunraysia FNL also saw close matches with an average winning margin of 16 points while it was a 20 point average win across all games in Division 1 of the Outer East FNL. In terms of close games and low scores, unfortunately Caramut FNC (Mininera & District FNL) and Apollo Bay FNC (Colac & District FNL) weren’t able to trouble the scorers at all in their defeats registering the dreaded 0.0 0 scoreline.
The juxtaposition to this was the 3 leagues that averaged over 100 point winning margins from the weekend. Gol Gol FNC kicked the 5th biggest score of the season so far when it managed 40.33 272 to defeat Meringur FNC by 256 points in their Millewa FNL match. Across the Millewa FNL, the 3 losing sides could only combine for a total of 45 points leading to an average league winning margin of 170 points. Rounding out the lopsided winning margins, the Picola and District FNL averaged wins of 104 points and it was an average of a 100 point loss across the board for the Mininera and District FNL round of games.
The weekend saw 2 clubs sing their club song for the first time in 2023 when North Shore FNC (Geelong FNL) and Avoca FNC (Maryborough Castlemaine District FNL) emerged victorious for the first time this season. While this round of matches also saw 3 clubs Emerald FNC (Outer East FNL - Div 1), Greta FNC (Ovens and King FNL) and Ultima FNC (Golden Rivers FNL) all suffer their first loss for the year, which now leaves only 17 undefeated sides to this point of the season.
The cold and wintery conditions didn’t seem to hamper the forwards from continuing their good form with 8 players kicking a bag of 10 or more goals. The standout was Avlie FNC’s Dominic Dare (Colac and District FNL) who managed to kick 14 of his sides 23 goals, while former Port Adelaide FC player Brett Eddy kicked 11 for Traralgon FNC in their big win over Maffra FNC in the Gippsland FNL.
Another 3 players reached the 50 goal milestone this weekend. Andrew McKay from Hepburn FNC (Central Highlands FNL) kicked 4 to reach 53, Woodside FNC’s (North Gippsland FNL) Daniel Farmer managed 2 to hit 51 while Liam Evans from Nathalia FNC (Murray FNL) kicked 1 goal to hit his half century mark. They are still quite off the pace on the overall leaderboard where Marong FNC’s Brandyn Grenfell (Loddon Valley FNL) still leads all comers with 81, while Dare’s bag of 14 rockets him to second place on 73 and Tim Looby from Strathmerton FNC (Picola and District FNL) drops to 3rd with 72.
