A last quarter avalanche from the Sunbury Lions helped them to a convincing win against East Point in the Ballarat Football League on Saturday.
There wasn’t much between the two teams after the first three quarters with the Kangaroos leading by three points at the last break.
The arm wrestle seemed set to continue in the final quarter, but the Lions had other ideas as they piled on eight last quarter goals to none to come away with a 16.7 (103)-8.10 (58) win.
Lions coach Matthew White was pretty happy with the result.
“It was a really good win,” he said. “After three quarter time we were able to break them and put a few goals on them in the end.
“We were a lot cleaner and were able to break away from the pressure. Jake Sutton kicked five goals in the final quarter and a lot of the small forwards got to work.”
White said the big change they made at three quarter time was moving Jake Egan forward and putting him in the square.
Egan kicked just one goal in that final quarter, but helped set up three or four others.
“We have the depth in the middle that we can put him forward,’ White said. “We still had Ben Cameron, Josh Guthrie, Jack Newitt and Harry Power go to work under Fraser [Ampulski].
“Jake [Egan] is a tough match up.”
Sutton was one of five multiple goalkickers for the Lions with four other players kicking two goals each.
Tyson Lever, Newitt and Power were named the Lions best.
White said they would love to see that four quarter performance more regularly instead of leaving it until the end of the game, but was still happy with the performance.
The win moves the Lions to a 4-1 record with only a loss to Darley so far.
White said they would look to look after some players in the next few weeks to make sure they are primed for the right time of the season.
“We’ve got some guys in the reserves playing good footy,’ he said. “We are prepared to look after people as we look to finish the year off strongly.”
The Lions are back on the road this week as they travel to face Lake Wendouree in Indigenous round.
“We’ve got a big three weeks of footy coming up,” White said. “We only started preparing for that yesterday [Saturday].
“We play Lakers up there, Sebastopol at home and then Melton into the bye. We’ll start to welcome some boys back after the bye like Blake Walker and Paddy Scanlan and then we’ve got four out of the next six weeks in Ballarat.”
