Game 1. A late Friday night start at 10.10 pm, the boys were tired, yet ready to go. The team was a mix of players from the Waverley 1 side and Waverley 2 side. The two coaches met for the first time and decided to go hard and get an early lead and that proved to be an excellent choice and had a strong win.

 

Game 2. An Early morning 8.10am, and the boys seemed to show tiredness from the late game the night before, the fact that the team had not played together showed true against a strong Mornington side, we went down by 10 pionts.

 

Game 3. The boys were down but knew they needed to win. They came out to a strong start and got an early lead, after a 10 minute slump the Rowville team caught up and with 30 seconds to go the Rowville team hit a three, to equal the score at 30 a piece. Last 8 seconds an ‘unsportsmanlike’ foul is called and we get two shots, we hit one. It appeared that we won by one point but due to a mistake on the score sheet the game went down as a draw.

 

Game 4. If we wanted to make the finals we knew we could only do it by percentage, so the boys came out hard and smashed the Nunnawading team. We made the finals and the boys knew they had to lift to compete in the semi.

 

Semi Final. A Melbourne team that looked good and hadn’t lost a game. The Melbourne team got out to an early ten point lead, and they held that for most of the game. With ten minutes to go coach Sam said ‘its now or never’ to the boys and they all switched on and won the game in the last 30 seconds, they go into the final on the back of a thriller.

 

Grand Final. The game was tough from the first tip off and the boys told the coach that they needed to watch a certain player and Richard Gee (Waverley1) got the job.  The game was up and down, with two points in it for most of the game. Even the arrival of Andrew Gaze to the opposition bench didn’t faze our boys. A fantastic effort from Jack Pertzel, (Waverly 2) taking sensational rebounds and dominating the Melbourne big men. In a two minute space near the end of the game the boys clearly wanted it more and got two quick goals to put the end to Melbourne dream run. Richard Gee getting the MVP for the game.

 

 

A fantastic experience for all the boys and they all played well throughout the tournament. Overall tournament standouts, Richard Gee and Jack Pertzel. I also want to commend the Waverely 1 team’s encouragment to the Waverly 2 team boys, all the boys were playing as a team by the end of the tournament and this showed great clubmanship.

 

Sam Dalton