Football’s a tough game at the best of times. And if you think the Carlton squad and their beleaguered supporters did it tough over the weekend, then spare a thought for the Smythesdale Football Club of the Central Highlands Football League in the Ballarat region of Victoria.
The lagging Bulldogs side hasn’t exactly been setting the world on fire since adopting the new club identity in 2014. And, in fact, even under their previous club name of Illabrook, the team hasn’t won a game of senior football since April 16th, 2011, rattling off 72 consecutive losses since then.
But none have come close to the absolute pounding they got at the hands of the Gordon Eagles on Saturday.
When the final siren had sounded, the scoreboard had to be seen to be believed. The Eagles had piled on 69.22 (436) – that’s 69 goals, 22 behinds for a total of FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY SIX – whilst the Bulldogs only managed to put up 1.1 (7). A final winning margin of 429 points.
For the Eagles, the goal fest was spread across the board – 19 of the team’s 22 players registered majors, with Steven Nicholson hauling in an incredible bag of 19 goals, followed up by Mick Nolan with 12, Jaymes Gorman with 6, and Chris Mcguigan with 5.
Angus Peart was the Bulldogs lone goal scorer, slotting the team’s only major in the first term.
The quarter-by-quarter scores make for even uglier reading. The Dogs put one goal on the board in quarter number one, and only managed a solitary behind for the remainder of the game. Whilst the Eagles leapt out of the blocks with a 16 goal first quarter, and followed that up with 17 in the second, 18 in the third, and another 18 in the last. That is, on average, a goal kicked every 70 seconds or there abouts for the entire game.
But despite all of that, Smythesdale coach Steve Fry retained his positivity post-match.
“The result on Saturday was obviously pretty devastating for the club, but in saying that, the results we’ve had we’ve actually improved this season compared to last year.
We’ve taken some small steps forward ann improved our losing margins this year by around 10 to 15 goals, on average.”
“We’ve got a fairly strong junior culture throughout the club. Our 18s should be playing finals this ear and our 15s played finals last year. As long as we can keep our head afloat at the minute, hopefully in the next couple of years we can turn it around.”
“As long as we can keep cutting the margins down from last year for the rest of this season, then we’ll probably be pretty happy and think that we have gone forward, despite what happened on Saturday.”
During the 2014 CHFL season, the Smythesdale Bulldogs scored a grand total of 92 points whilst allowing 4040 through the 17 game season. After 6 rounds in the 2015 season, their offensive output has already eclipsed all of last year’s, with 99 total points registered, whilst their defence has only let in 1245. Statistically, the club is on track for a huge improvement in for the year.
The Smythesdale Bulldogs are now moving on to their scheduled Round 7 clash with the Dunnstown Towners at the Dunnstown Football Ground this coming Saturday, May 30th.
C’ARN DOGGIES!
Photo: 9News Melbourne via Twitter.
