Football
8 April, 2025
Swifts record big win over Natimuk
After an even first half, the Swifts shook free of Natimuk United after half time to claim a 61-point win against their opposition in round one of the Horsham District Football Netball League.
Natimuk trailed by just three points at both quarter time and going into the break at half time, but the Swifts dominated the last half, finishing 13.17 (95) to 5.4 (34).
Brett Hargreaves, coach of the Swifts, described the win as having gone to plan.
"I knew they would give us a good first half at least," Hargreaves said.
"They have a lot of faces that are new, their side is young and they were always going to come at us, which they did.
"I told our boys not to panic and stick to what we were trying to do, and it worked out in the second half."
Hargreaves said in the first half the defensive pressure from the Swifts wasn't up to scratch.
"The focus, above all else, in the final half was man up all over the ground and take their run away from them, and pressure them, which we did well, particularly in the first 10 minutes of the last half.
"We kept the ball in our forward 50.
"We didn't generate a lot of goals but just that period broke their run and after that it was one-way traffic.
"After that they got only a couple of points so our defence improved vastly."
While Hargreaves said the defence from the Swifts was one of their game keys, it was through the middle where the side often let themselves down on the defensive front.
"They improved a lot more, our back six were credible during the first half, but it was through the ground where we improved the defensive pressure," he said.
The coach was impressed by Liam Scott at centre half-back.
"He played well the entire four quarters, he didn't have a bad quarter, his incercept making, and we got a lot of run from Liam as well," Hargreaves said.
"He set up a number of goals from there – you can't expect much more from a defender."
Hargreaves said he was also happy to have 10 different goal-scorers stand up for this team.
"It's been documented well we lost Paul Summers last year," Hargreaves said.
"He kicked 120 goals.
"We always need to generate goals from elsewhere so the entire pre-season was geared towards creating goals from other sources.
"We need midfielders, we need forward pockets and flanks to stand up and create different opportunities, and that's what happened so I was pleased witht that.
"Our accuracy was bad.
"We had, I think, 36 scoring shots including out on the full, and we only kicked 13 goals so we need to clean that up, but it's something we can fix."
Alongside the best player in Scott, Jack Cann also played well for the Swifts, while for Natimuk Drew Harris and Mitchell Clarke were the better performers.