DEMONS captain Ash Hunt has celebrated his 200th senior game in style after his Timboon side put together its most complete performance of its season to run riot over Allansford.
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Although finals are out of the question for Timboon, the Demons all but ended Allansford’s chances of snatching fifth place, stretching the Cats’ losing streak to four games.
Demons spearhead Bayley Thompson backed up his 10-goal haul against Russells Creek with a stunning three-goal performance, including a crucial goal late in the last term to secure victory.
Determined to bounce back from a 116-point annihilation at the hands of Merrivale last week, the Demons trailed early but wrestled the ascendancy back to head in 13-point leaders at half-time.
Allansford rallied in the third term, crawling within two points of Timboon’s lead, but couldn’t capitalise in the last term and fell by 28 points at the final siren.
Demons coach Mick Hunt said the performance was the four-quarter result of what the club had been trying to produce all season.
“We really got reward for effort, because we didn’t drop off,” he said.
“A point was made by a bloke who was in the box with me in the third quarter in that he said ‘our blokes have won enough of the footy in that quarter to deserve to win it, why can’t we keep doing that for the next quarter? Have we wasted our chance to win?’.
“We took that the boys at three quarter time. I said ‘we might have wasted some opportunities, but why can’t we make the most of them in this quarter?’… The tide turned for us.”
Key defender Sam Newey limped from the ground in the first quarter, but former co-coach Matt Whitehead filled the void – producing the best game of his season at centre-half back.
Hunt praised his side’s use of the ball in the wet conditions and pressure-filled environment from a desperate Allansford.
“The boys wanted to win. But they’ve wanted to win every other game that we’ve lost. We got on a roll and it’s very hard to stop a team on a roll,” he said.
“I made an apology to the blokes on the bench as they didn’t get as much time as they normally would have. But I felt it was that critical in a game of inches to make sure we had the right players on the field at the right times.”
Allansford coach Jason Saunders said the club was plagued with lapses which ultimately cost it the game and a place in finals.
“Our work around the contests just wasn’t good enough,” he said.
“But we have to turn our attention to Deakin now, even though our chances of playing finals are probably gone with that. We want to make sure we can respond and not have this fade out in the last quarter.”