Canterbury stun St Mary’s to claim back-to-back wins

Round 11 of the Division 2 Men’s saw St Mary’s Salesian concede top spot after losing for the first time on the road in 2025.

Canterbury have produced arguably the upset of the season to date, defeating top of the table St Mary’s Salesian by 24 points. The Cobras kicked five goals to one in the opening quarter to lead by 25 points at the first break, and managed to find a goal when the Saints drew within 10 points.

Cobras’ coach Steve Brown praised the efforts of his defenders, highlighting Jayden Collins and Adam Marx for their performances, as well as the scoring returns from Matthew Fotia and young recruit Ryder Daffey. The forward pair accounted for seven of Canterbury’s 16 goals, including five in the second half.

St Mary’s coach Clay Tait said the Saints were unable to hold their defensive structure against the Cobras, which resulted in conceding their biggest score for the year (clearly surpassing the 88 points scored by West Brunswick in Round 7).

The visitors were also unable to take full advantage of their deep entries inside forward 50 in the second and third quarter, kicking 9.9 over the middle period of the game. However, Tait felt the loss highlighted a range of areas where the team needed to improve in the remaining seven weeks of the season.

Old Yarra Cobras took advantage of St Mary’s slip up, with their 58-point win over South Melbourne at a muddy Lindsay Hasset Oval seeing them reclaim first place on the ladder.

“One side of the ground was just a slop, and blokes were slipping over everywhere, so [the game] had a bit of Sydney versus the Western Bulldogs about it,” said Cobras coach Nathan Monaco. “South Melbourne came out and tried to be physical, but we’re a pretty physical group as well. We played the game we needed to play and there was a lot of fast transition on the dry side of the ground.”

The Bloods kicked three of the first four goals before the Cobras replied with four in ten minutes to lead by 13 at quarter time and continued their run from there, leading by 27 at half time and 35 at the final break.

The win came at a cost though, with Adam Baltruweit – who had played his first game since 2023 last week – sustaining a serious knee injury in the first 30 seconds of the game, Sam Hooper going down with a calf injury roughly 10 minutes later, and Callum Copeland needing a trip to hospital after splitting his lip shortly before half time.

“It’s pretty shattering for him, and it’s devastating as a club to see,” Monaco said of Baltruweit’s injury. “But it was good we were able to play four quarters of consistent footy, especially with our backs against the wall with regards to rotations.”

West Brunswick made it four wins on the bounce after defeating St John’s by 51 points at home. The Magpies kept the visitors to a solitary point in the first quarter and kept the pressure up for the remainder of the match. At first glance the 15.21 scoreline could suggest that the home side left plenty of points out there, but the number of behinds wasn’t solely the result of poor goalkicking.

“It was a strong, contested game,” said Magpies coach Regan Tait, “St John’s defensive pressure was really good from the get-go, [but] I was really happy with how the boys went.”

Tait felt his side had become much more settled over the past few weeks, allowing them to maintain their structure for longer periods of time.

“We know what we’re doing, we know how to implement it, and the boys are all working really well together. We were disciplined enough to hold the space on the outside and then get a bit of a run on.”

Whitefriars backed up last week’s big win over St John’s with a much closer contest against Aquinas. The Friars kicked the first three goals of the game before Jacob Costello kicked truly for the Bloods in the 13^th minute, but the Bloods kicked the last two of the quarter to get the margin to 13 points at quarter time.

Aquinas coach Craig Glennie said it was the one that got away for his side, who failed to take advantages of set shots early in the first quarter while also gifting their opponents goals from turnover throughout the match.

“We had a really good third quarter, and got back to within eight points. We were defending and one of our guys got a mark or a free kick right near the point post. You expect him to kick it long down the line and try to hold on for the last minute, but he saw one of our players on the boundary and tried to hit a short 25 metre kick. Whitefriars intercepted it, centred it, and kicked a goal because we’d set up for the long kick down the line,” said Glennie.

A similar error happened at a crucial period of the fourth quarter.

“They kicked a behind to go eight [points] up, and instead of going straight down the middle – which you would expect when you haven’t got a lot of time – we went to the flank and turned it over. They spotted a guy in the pocket, and he slotted it from there, which put them two goals up. That was game over.”

MHSOB got revenge for their narrow Round 1 loss to Hawthorn, with the Unicorns piling on 15 goals to one after the half time to record an 87-point victory. It was MHSOB’s first win over the Hawthorn for over a year, with the Hawks taking the points on at least the previous three occasions.

The Hawks jumped to a 15-point lead at quarter time before MHSOB got going and cut the margin back to a single point at the main break. But it was a different game when the teams returned to the field from the as the Unicorns kicked away to keep in touch with the top four.

Will Hellier finished with five for the Unicorns – his second five-goal haul of the season – and was named among his teams’ best, while Justin Raiti kicked three for the Hawks.

Round 12 features three matches that will have major implications for the makeup of the top four, with two wins separating first from fourth. Ladder leaders Old Yarra (38 points) face off against Whitefriars (fourth, 30 points), MHSOB (fifth, 24 points) travel to Ransford Oval to play West Brunswick (third, 32), and St Mary’s (second, 36 points) hosts South Melbourne (sixth, 20 points) at Jordan Reserve.

The remaining matches will also make the lower end of the ladder clearer – with Hawthorn (ninth, 8 points) hosting Canterbury (eighth, 12 points) and St John’s (seventh, 16 points) welcoming Aquinas (tenth, 4 points) to Thomas Carroll Reserve.