St Therese AFL 9s team advances to regional titles

ST THERESE Primary School’s AFL 9s team is bound for the Western Metropolitan Region finals in Point Cook in term 3.

The team won the Bellarine Division last week after defeating Barwon Heads in the grand final by more than 30 points at South Barwon Reserve.

Coach Steve Iannazzo said the group showed great fight to recover after losing their opening pool match.

“There’s not a lot of room for error in those round-robin formats and they were pretty disappointed after that first loss,” he said.

“But they definitely showed a huge amount of resolve for such young boys to be able to bounce back and then go undefeated right through to the grand final.”

He said there was a howling wind favouring one end.

“It was a game of two halves where they really had to pile on the goals in one half, and defend like crazy in the second, and they just did a terrific job in both halves,” he said.

“They even scored against the wind, which the other team didn’t manage to do.”

It was the second round of games for the team after it finished undefeated and on top of its pool in a round-robin tournament against Bellbrae, Torquay College, Clairvaux and Bellaire.

“There’s a number of players in the team that don’t actually play football and I thought that was really cool,” Iannazzo said.

“St Therese’s policy is to prioritise the Grade 6ers and so [they’re] a group of mates that have gone through right from prep.”