St Mary MacKillop College’s Year 10 boys AFL team played some outstanding games against quality sides to win the ACC Year 10 School Boys South West Carnival on Wednesday. The boys rose to challenge with a great style of play, fancy foot skills and excellent teamwork to convincingly win all three games and progress undefeated into the Grand Final Carnival in Perth next week.
Their first game against Mandurah Baptist College saw some fantastic centre clearances from Finn McShane and Jake Davis, with impressive runs off the half backline from Miles Nerva. With excellent leading from key forward Connor Smith, the boys came away with a solid win at 34 to Mandurah’s 6.
Game two had the boys up against a strong team from Bunbury Catholic College. Noah Cummins and Sam Tolley applied excellent defensive pressure and ruck work to provide lots of run to Seve Toovey, Killburn Booth, Kaleb Eades and Reuben Thew, who capitalised every opportunity. This was a hard and very physical game, with the boys digging deep to come through with a win against the favourites Bunbury Catholic College by five points.
By the final game the boys were quite sore and getting fatigued. Both teams came out to win, however, and at half time the scores were dead even. Revived by snakes and oranges supplied by our awesome parental support, the boys started to lower their eyes and hit targets in the second half. Tully Griffiths’ composed skills, Jadon Granville’s evasive moves and Iggy Happ’s ferocious pressure helped to feed the ball to Brady Richards and Nathan Bell, whose silky smooth skills converted in the goal square to give us a runaway final score of 38 to Bunbury Cathedral Grammar’s 16.
Thank you to all the parents who came and supported the boys. The whole team played in excellent spirit, showcasing their teamwork, skills and heart to make it through to the finals in Perth on Wednesday 22 June against the winners from the metropolitan rounds. We are all very excited to be in the finals again after quite a few years.