As wild weather swept across the Southern Tablelands on the weekend, the Yass Roos were in the midst of a difficult victory over the Ainslie Football Club (AFC), which also confirmed them as Minor Premiers for 2018.
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Although Yass have been favourites in the competition for much of the year, the win in Cooma on Saturday confirmed the Roos’ number one position for the rest of the year.
The crucial result was far from easily won. En route to their eventual 6.17.53 to 3.6.24 victory, Yass kicked nearly three times as many behinds as they did goals, something which Roos coach Sam Campbell attributed to the blustery conditions.
“We were pretty wayward, it was a pretty breezy day,” Campbell said.
“It was a really scrappy sort of game and we didn’t convert some of our chances. There was a few rushed behinds and all that, probably not the best day to be kicking in front of the big sticks.”
The win over Cooma was preceded by wins over Googong, Molonglo, a tight one-point win over the Woden Blues, and a thunderous 20 goal win over Batemans Bay, all of which indicates that the Roos have well and truly bounced back from their round 11 loss to the Goulburn Swans.
Although the results have been in their favour, Campbell said that there are still some lingering signs of the inconsistency which has been the biggest hurdle for the Roos this year.
“We’ve still been up and down, but I think we learnt a lot from that,” he said.
“Goulburn are a good team, they’re hard to beat at home. We’ve played some good football since then, but we’ve also played some poor football.
“It’s just the consistency we’re trying to look for. We’ve got that mix of very old, experienced players and some blokes that haven’t played football before, so I think you’re always gonna get some inconsistency.”
Campbell added that inexperienced players consistently show signs of improvement each week, and he hopes that the final two matches of the year will provide the team with opportunities to bring everything together ahead of finals.
This weekend’s clash will be a good opportunity for Yass to gauge its form. The Roos are set to play the Southern Cats in a first-versus-second encounter at O’Connor Park.
“Pretty excited about that, it should be a good hit-out before going into finals,” Campbell said.
“Hopefully a bit better weekend than we had on the weekend.”
In their last encounter, Yass defeated the Cats in Cooma. Campbell expects that “they’re gonna be hurting from us beating them at home.
“They’d love to knock us off at our home ground.”
Yass will take on Cooma from 2pm on Saturday August 25.
