By Connor Schmidtke
As the final weekend of the regular season approaches across in the Eastern Football Netball League, many teams will be looking to either secure their spot in the post-season or finish their year on a positive note.
But amongst several intriguing games this Saturday, some of the more captivating matches come from teams sitting lower down the ladder fighting to avoid relegation.
One of these games will be in Division Three, with Fairpark taking on Scoresby in a battle to avoid dropping into Division Four.
Fairpark have enjoyed a more competitive and successful season in 2022, just their second year in Division Three following the covid pandemic. The Lions were promoted after winning the Division Four premiership in 2019, but their debut in the next tier was put on hold through 2020 with football cancelled for most of the country.
After just one win in the shortened 2021 season, Fairpark have improved to four wins this year but still need one more against Scoresby to avoid relegation.
Fairpark’s coach, Sean Stanton said that his side will takeaway plenty of positives this year despite their ladder position.
“We probably haven’t won as many games as we would have liked, but some of the positives have been great.
“We’ve been far more competitive this year than we were last year, we’ve obviously won more games than we did last year.
“We have seen some good growth and development from some of our younger guys.
“The playing group have continued to work hard and tried to improve, which probably wasn’t the case in my first years at Fairpark. On the back of a few losses, numbers would start to drop away but this year they have really dug in, which is a real positive.”
With Waverley Blues and Warrandyte dominating the division for much of the past two seasons, every other Division Three side has been trying to find ways to close the gap between them and the top sides.
For Fairpark, the difference between them and the top was huge last season, but coach Stanton believes the gap has closed in 2022.
“I think our results reflect the improvement. There’s probably only been two games that we’ve been completely outplayed from start to finish.
“The scoreboard may not reflect it, but we’ve been more consistent, and I think we’ve played a better brand of footy. The results at times have looked poor, but it probably hasn’t been a true reflection in my eyes.
“We’ve probably let ourselves down in crucial parts of games, having lapses for 15-20 minutes that have blown the results out of the water a little bit.
“I think we’ve improved; I think if you look back across the year, we’ve been more competitive, made big improvements and hopefully can get the win on the weekend and secure our spot for next year.”
An area that the Lions have been susceptible in statistically is their defence, conceding almost 100 points per game to opposition teams. They have given up the most points of any team in the division this year, despite the numerous improvements the side has made this season.
Stanton believes that these statistics stem from a weakened midfield and lack of depth, putting the backline under immense pressure.
“If I sit back and look at our list, I think our back six is solid. Unfortunately, at times we’ve struggled to get our best players on the park which isn’t an excuse, but it’s been a challenge.
“It probably highlights the fact we need to bolster our midfield a bit. I think it’s about weight of numbers, if the opposition continue to get the ball inside the 50, you’re eventually going to leak a score.
“Over the off-season it won’t be lost on us. We aren’t a high scoring team so that’s something we need to address. But I think we need to address our midfield depth as well.
“There’s been some struggles there this year but, in all honesty, I don’t think our backline has been all that poor despite what the scoreboard suggests.”