Tara Murray
A team full of teenagers all but locked in Macedon’s finals spot ahead of the final round of the Riddell District Football League season.
A win against Melton Centrals and Woodend-Hesket knocking off Kyneton, has the Cats sitting four points and more than 17 per cent clear of the Tigers.
Cats coach Al Meldrum said it’s nice to have their finals fate in their own hands.
“It looks that way,” he said of sealing a finals spot. “We are a game and a decent percentage ahead.
“Our old rivals Woodend did us a solid favour and we did what we had to do. With a game left it looks like we’ll probably be playing finals.
“We play each game on its merits and outside of that we look at things in our control. We didn’t want to rely on other results, but we were keeping an eye on them.”
The Cats headed to Arnolds Creek Recreation Reserve to face Melton Centrals on Saturday.
Meldrum said it was one of the best days in terms of the weather that he had encountered at the ground.
He said Centrals had a big day off field and on the field had really come to play.
Centrals led at quarter time before the Cats hit the front and led narrowly at both half and three quarter time.
They kicked two goals to one in the final quarter to lock in a 10.8 (68)-8.5 (53) win.
“Centrals were really good,” Meldrum said. “They played well and restricted our ability to play the way that we wanted to play.
“It was one of my proudest moments as coach. We had 10 teenagers out there, that’s most we’ve had.
“We had nine before a late withdrawal. That’s almost 50 per cent of the team being teenagers, which is pretty amazing.”
Bradley Cooke kicked four goals for the Cats. He’s kicked 10 goals the past two weeks in the absence of his brother, skipper Jason Cooke.
Meldrum said Lachlan Hay in the middle and Ed Ferguson down back were a couple of the other younger players who stepped up.
He said it was a good experience for the younger players and what the club was trying to build.
Leaders Hamish Govan and Matthew Dick were named their best.
Meldrum said they were hopeful of getting some players to return in the next couple of weeks, including Jason Cooke.
He said Nathan Bridgland was probably done for the season.
The Cats finish the regular season against Romsey.
The two teams are likely to face each other in the first week of finals, with the Redbacks to finish fourth.
Meldrum said it would be interesting to see how both sides approach the match.
“We are pretty evenly matched when we played them at our ground,” he said. “It wasn’t a great game for both teams and it was a three goal margin.”
Romsey enters the match on the back of a loss to Diggers Rest.
In the other match, Wallan beat Lancefield.
