June 21, 2017
Panthers notched up a narrow win against their 1st Division arch-rivals Gunners when the two teams met on the Panthers home turf at the Burnett Street sports grounds in Nanango on Saturday.
Gunners were missing key players Will Ambrose and Lachlan Hurt, who left for a three week soccer tour of Germany last Thursday, but a squad reshuffle by coach Deb Ovens to make up for their absence appeared to pay off.
Gunners fought ferociously against the Panthers from the outset of the game, keeping the action in the Panthers’ half of the park more often than their opponents are normally used to.
A boil-over at Gunners’ goal mouth allowed Panthers to score fairly early in the match, but it turned out to be the only goal of the game.
Gunners refused to let their heads drop and instead applied many of the same tactics the Panthers have used against them so successfully in the past.
They went for possession at every opportunity, and mounted a rock-solid defence whenever the Panthers managed to get the ball across the centre line, eagerly punting it back towards Panthers’ goal keeper.
To their credit, while the Panthers may have been surprised by Gunners’ new form, they held their nerve and managed to keep their opponents as scoreless as they had almost been themselves.
It was an exciting match to watch.
And while the two sides won’t play one another again until July 15 – when they’ll meet on Gunners’ home turf at Tom Alford Oval – it will be a match worth waiting for.
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In the Women’s Division clash between Gunnettes and Nanango, the smart money was on the lady Panthers who had delivered a 4-nil thrashing to the Gunnettes when the teams last met in late May.
But this time around, it was the plucky Gunnettes who delivered the biggest surprise by holding the Panthers scoreless for the first half of the match.
The Gunnettes’ form reversal was obvious to spectators who’ve followed the side’s progress this season, and very heartening to see it come from a team that barely made it out of the cellar last year.
Experienced players like Natalia Peterson, Rahab Murray, Kate Mashford and Taylor White have been working hard to train this season’s newcomers, and that is clearly starting to pay off.
All the same, the lady Panthers can never be under-estimated.
So when Jess Erlich finally found the back of Gunnettes’ nets in the second half to end the scoring drought, the writing was on the wall.
Erlich’s effort was enough to galvanise the Gunnettes, who desperately sought an equalizer.
But unfortunately this effort left their defences open, allowing Bree Pogany to sink two more rockets into the Gunnettes’ goal in the dying minutes of the game.
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In the 2nd Division match that kicked off the day at the Burnett Street sports grounds, the odds favoured Gunners and they quickly delivered the goods.
The last time the teams had faced off, Gunners had secured a narrow 1-nil victory over the Panthers by playing a more measured and disciplined game.
This time around, with more experience under their belts, Nanango played a much better game.
But Gunners still dominated on the park, securing two goals early in the match and rebuffing the Panthers attacks on their own goal mouth to go into half time with a 2-nil lead.
In the second half, Nanango tightened their defences and visibly ramped up their attacks.
But Gunners did likewise, and they were able to sink one more into the back of the Panthers’ nets before the full-time whistle.
The win was a pleasant turnaround for Gunners, who haven’t tasted victory for the last few weeks and know Panthers are usually very difficult to defeat on their home turf.
And while the loss was no doubt a disappointment for the Panthers, their 2nd Division squad improved very rapidly in the second half of last year’s season and could do the same this year, too.
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Unfortunately, the results of the games between Barambah and Wests at Tom Alford Oval are not known at this time.
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Next Week:
South Burnett Football will be attempting to hold their second Super Saturday competition across two fields at the Wondai Soccer Grounds this Saturday, June 24.
An attempt to hold a Super Saturday competition in Kingaroy earlier this year – where all the teams in the league play on a single day – turned into a disaster when the match had to be called off at short notice due to ex-Cyclone Debbie.
This threw the carefully-scripted season’s schedule into chaos, with teams playing mid-week catch-up games for many weeks afterwards (right up until just a few days before the President’s Cup, in fact).
Fortunately, with fine weather forecast for Saturday, the chances of a repeat disaster are slim.
The proposed schedule is as follows:
Field 1: Nanango v Wests
- 2nd Division: 11:00am
- Women’s Division: 12:30pm
- 1st Division: 2:00pm
Field 2: Gunners v Barambah
- 2nd Division: 11:00am
- Women’s Division: 12:30pm
- 1st Division: 2:00pm
