Football
30 April, 2025
Dimboola players return for clash against Saints
Dimboola will be searching for their first win of the season this Saturday when they come up against Horsham Saints at Coughlin Park.
It's not panic stations, though, as the side has only played a couple of games this year - losing to Minyip Murtoa in their first match, and on Saturday, to Ararat.
Ararat is proving quickly they will be the ones to beat this season, already with three wins, and an average margin of winning of more than 120 points.
In the game between Ararat and Dimboola last Saturday, the end score was 6.5 (41) to 24.14 (158).
Going into the game, coach of Dimboola Dean Toet was under no illusion about the challenge infront of them and as such, his side had their own focus.
"We knew it was going to be a challenging game and they are an extremely slick side, so we didn't go into the game with the score in mind, but more so trying to improve on a few of the things we lacked against Minyip the prior week," Toet said.
"We focused heavily on our pressure and our tackles, which we have got the data back on now, and it's been quite pleasing that we have stepped up."
Dimboola weren't assisted in having numerous players out last Saturday, compared to their line up against Minyip Murtoa the week prior.
"That made things a lot harder, and we've had a couple of injuries that haven't helped," added Toet.
The coach said he was again impressed by the efforts of Ben Miller, along with Andrew Moore.
"Our captain, (Miller) was outstanding for us in the middle, along with Andrew, who was good," said Toet.
"Obviously, a lot of our key recruits are out, but those guys stand tall every week, we just need to have a few more to give them a hand."
For Ararat, Cody Lindsay was the leading goal scorer, with four majors, while for Dimboola, Benjamin Brett kicked two.
Better players for Ararat were Naish McRoberts and Brayden Draffin while the losing side were led well also by Michael Pohlner and Simon Hobbs.
This Saturday Dimboola will be facing the Saints, who have experienced a loss and a win so far this season.
They lost again to Nhill first up by 41 points, before getting a win against the Demons last week by eight points.
The Dimboola coach said they will welcome four or five of their players back for the clash this week.
"We want to ramp it up, same thing again this week, our pressure, the one percenters, we want to get ourselves up to another level this week," Toet said.
"We will set another benchmark as to where we need to be, and probably work on some of our other players, to get to more contests and get their hands on the footy more."