Seagulls break drought, eye brighter future

NORTH Shore president Maryian Szponar says the struggling GFL club is on the right track after winning its first game of the season.

The Seagulls beat Lara away 15.18 (108) to 13.16 (94) in Round 9 in the battle between the competition’s bottom-placed sides.

North Shore’s previous best performance was a 130-point loss to Grovedale in Round 6.

“It was like they had won a premiership, it was really good,” Szponar said of the reaction from players and fans.

“All the supporters, everyone’s starting to come back, they’re supporting us and they can see light at the end of the tunnel.

“Where we’re going to, we know it’s going to take us four or five years to get rebuilding on what we’re doing. There’s a lot of plans in place and everyone’s starting to jump on board.”

The president said player numbers had grown since the start of the year.

“Two weeks before the season started, we had 15 players.

“[On Saturday] we had six over [miss out on seniors and reserves], plus seven injuries. So we’ve got about 70 players on the list.

“They’re not superstars. We’ve probably got five senior players and we’ve probably got 10 reserve players, all the rest are battlers.

“But we’re trying to teach them how to play the game.”

Coach Mark Hounslow said the team stuck to instruction and applied high pressure.

“We knew with two of the lower teams, that you’re going to get different stages of the game, [where] we’ll be able to control [it] and so will they.

“So if we could bring that pressure game and come forward to defend and shut down a bit of time and space on them, we’d get some repeat looks on goal.”

Hounslow said he hoped the players could take some confidence from the victory into their Round 10 clash against Colac.

“Let’s improve on those margins and keep ourselves in games for longer periods.”

The Seagulls host the Tigers this Saturday, June 28, at Windsor Park at 2.10pm.

Elsewhere, Grovedale welcome St Joseph’s, Leopold have Bell Park, Newtown and Chilwell host Geelong West, South Barwon battle Lara and St Mary’s face St Albans.