By: Hayden Tilbrook
RINGWOOD defeated Boronia 80-43 in Round 4 to send a message to the rest of the competition that last year’s grand finalist refuses to fade into obscurity in 2019.
After comfortable defeats at the hands of early-season bolters Templestowe and powerhouse Mitcham in Rounds 1 and 2, the Redbacks picked up their first points of the season via a last-gasp draw with mid-table The Basin in Round 3.
As a result, Ringwood found its 2019 season balanced on a knife’s edge heading into the Round 4’s grand final rematch with the Hawks, who they fell 16 points short of in the 2018 Division 3 decider.
Despite the temptation to dwell on last year’s result heading into the critical match-up, Redbacks coach Brett Rowe said his group’s preference to focus on the future is what has got the club back on track.
“We didn’t mention it (the grand final loss) at all during the week,” Rowe told EFL Sunday.
“If we keep looking in the rear-view mirror, a lot of things are going to go past us.
“We just focused on what we knew we could do right … and if we do that we can probably give ourselves every chance of winning the game of footy.
“The motivation may have come from the playing group themselves, because it definitely wasn’t mentioned during pre-game or during the week.”
Rowe said that an injection of fresh faces into the fold over the off season had helped to force the entire club to move on from the disappointment of 2018.
“It wasn’t a consideration (to analyse the grand final defeat) because it’s a new team,” he said.
“There’s six new players in that team, so even though there still is a core group in there, we’ve got new players in there.
“They don’t need to know about what happened in the past – they’re now part of the group (and) they’re learning our way and how we like to go about things.”
The new-look senior playing group faces the task of paving over the holes left in Ringwood’s line up with the absence of 1116 SEN Division 3 2018 Team of the Year captain Trent Farmer and ruckman Ben Power.
Rowe explained that it would take a whole-club effort, as well as an adjustment to the Redbacks’ forays forward to cover the loss of 2018’s Paul Edie medallist, who booted 62 goals from 17 games in 2018.
“Obviously, they’re great losses, Ben and Trent,” he said.
“We had a ready-made back-up ruckman in Daniel Jordanov who was Ben’s back-up ruckman last year, so we knew we could probably cover that a fair way.
“Obviously Trent’s the big one, with … kicking our goals.
“We’ve just had to restructure our forward line a little bit better … we’re not as predictable anymore so we’re able to use other avenues.
“We’ve been working really hard on our forward entries over the last couple of weeks (and) it started to pay off yesterday (in the win over Boronia).”
The Redbacks’ ability to force the reigning premiers into making uncharacteristic mistakes, whilst playing well to the trying conditions at Tormore Reserve, earned the praise of their senior coach.
“It was our pressure around the ball (that pleased me the most),” Rowe said.
“Over the last few years, our contested footy, we really pride ourselves on it.
“We’ve been down in that area the first couple of games, so to really hit our straps in that area and then our pressure game came with it.
“It went hand-in-hand and we were able to just get the ball forward … we were about just getting the ball forward ugly.
“It didn’t have to be smart or pretty, just get the ball forward and let our small forwards go to work.”
Ringwood will look to build on Round 4’s success as it returns home to Jubilee Park this week hosting Mulgrave, before the club’s annual Parker Family Cup match against Heathmont in Round 6.