South Melbourne claim Blood bowl bragging rights

The last round of the Division 2 Men’s competition before the bye saw the visiting teams win four of the five matches.

Old Yarra Cobras suffered their first loss of the season, falling seven points short of St Mary’s Salesian at Ferndale Park.

The Cobras started slowly and trailed by 16 points at quarter time but responded strongly with four goals to one in the second to lead by four points going into half time. Old Yarra kicked the first two of the second half to extend their lead to 16 points before St Mary’s returned fire with five of the next six to lead by nine points at the final change. The ladder-leading Cobras had more scoring opportunities in the last quarter but couldn’t make them count.

Cobras coach Nathan Monaco said St Mary’s were able to take full advantage of the patches where his side lost switched off.

“They were quite quick and ran well off half back… but great learnings can come out of losses, you can see where they get on top of you and where you can exploit them next time,” he said.

“Both teams played their brand, and they took the four points this time, but we’re confident that next time we can turn the tables [on them].”

MHSOB notched up their fifth win of the season and now sit outside the top four on percentage following their 20-point win over Whitefriars. It was a tough start to the day for the home side, losing a player to a partial ACL tear in the warmup.

“[Thankfully] it’s not a complete tear. The way we’ve had injuries this year, a six to eight week injury is a pretty good outcome for us,” said Whitefriars coach Lucas Matthews, who felt his side struggled to find their groove in the forward half.

“We failed to execute moving forward and turned the ball over coming into our forward line at crucial moments.

Unicorns coach Bernie Pretty described the win as his side’s most complete performance of the year.

“Our pressure was really good. We [stuck] to our structure much more than we had [been] and started to fix some mistakes we’ve been making. We still need to work on our ball movement and how we transition away from the contest, but it’s a step forward.”

St John’s got back to an even 4-4 scoreline with a tight 11-point win over Canterbury. The high-scoring affair saw the two teams combine for 17 goals at half-time, with 11 of these coming in the first quarter.

JOC’s coach Tim Edwards was pleased with the effort shown by his side, especially with four players backing up for their second game of the day after playing in the reserves, who otherwise were down to 13 men.

“We played a smaller forward line and swung a few magnets around – it was one of those games where we went in wanting to try a few things and if we win, we win, [or] we lose, we lose,” he said.

Edwards was pleased to get revenge on the Cobras, who defeated the JOC’s in the Division 3 Grand Final last season, but felt there was still room to improve.

“We felt there was a couple of times where we could have blown them away, but we let them back into the game on the back of a few skill errors.

In the battle of the Bloods, South Melbourne Districts made it four wins on the trot with a 10-point win over Aquinas, although winning coach Nick Abbott far from pleased with the performance.

“It was probably the ugliest game of football we’ve played in the three years that I’ve been here – we’ll have to do a fair bit of work and take some learnings away from it, that’s for sure… we’re not playing to the standard that we’ve set for ourselves,” he said.

South Melbourne have played just two of their eight games at home so far this season, and Abbott is looking forward to spending less time on the road in the back half of the season.

Aquinas coach Craig Glennie said losing three key midfield players – two to injury during the game and one to an overseas holiday – made it difficult to run out the game.

“We lacked run in the last quarter. [South Melbourne] set up the ground very well and played the last quarter better than we did,” he said.

Despite the late fadeout, Glennie praised his back six – led by Jacob Costello – as the Bloods conceded their lowest score for the season, and debutants Jacob Birch and Andre Cochrane, who kicked Aquinas’ first two goals of the game.

West Brunswick snapped their two-game losing streak with a 61-point win over Hawthorn at Rathmines Road Reserve. Although the final margin exceeded 10 goals, the Hawks were in the contest for the best part of the match.

“They brought the pressure early,” said Magpies coach Regan Tait. “Their reserves had a good win over our reserves, and I think the team rallied behind the reserves. It was a bit of a shock at the start.”

Tait was pleased with how his side responded to Hawthorn’s pressure.

“Last year we had some pretty bad habits, not being able to take control of the game and knowing when to slow down. Yesterday there was a point where we started to go back to those old habits, but were able to quickly adjust to that, which was good.”

Hawks coach Mark Murray said his charges were in good spirits despite their 1-7 record, and keen to continue building connection heading into the bye.

“The difference in the game was our forward entries, we just butchered the ball going forward and that really hurt us. But we’re all keen to keep at it and we’re going to keep working hard. I know the scores don’t look like it, but I don’t think the wins are far away.”

Division 2 action resumes on June 14, with West Brunswick hosting Whitefriars in a clash between two top-four teams, new ladder leaders St Mary’s travel to Thomas Carroll Reserve to play St John’s, Old Yarra will look to bounce back when they face off against Canterbury in the Cobra bowl, MHSOB square off against South Melbourne, and Hawthorn will be keen to avoid their eighth consecutive defeat of 2025 in their match against Aquinas.