C1 Round 16, Kalamunda V’s Ballajura at Ray Owen Oval
In round 7, the Cougars easily defeated the Ballajura ‘Royals ’by 89 points at Kingfisher Park and are now sitting in 7th position on the PFL ladder.
Despite their low ranking, the Royals play a hard physical game, and the Cougars will need to remain composed throughout this encounter and continue with their game plan that’s been serving them well this season.
After heavy rain in the early afternoon Ray Owen Oval resembled a ‘swamp’ after the Reserves and Colts games earlier in the day. The two sides ran-out in a break in the weather, with Skipper Trent Pottinger winning the toss and kicking with the breeze to the Sanderson Road end of the ground.
This proved to be a good decision as the Cougars in the appalling conditions took control of the ruck through Jack Amos and Cormac White. They delivered the wet ball to the advantage of the forwards, where Ashton McGowan and Utah John-Furnace battled hard to score 2 goals for the quarter. Once the rain started again the conditions deteriorated and forward play with some determined defence from the Royals forced the Cougars to kick 6 points in a slippery scramble, to lead by 18 points at the break.
In the second term the Royals sensed they may have a chance of winning this game as they applied plenty of pressure on the Cougar backs, with Josh Touchell, Mitch Massam and Mitch Della-Franca having to work hard to keep them out and restrict their score to 2.2 for the quarter.
The Cougars with some heavy-duty work against the wind, which had increased slightly, pushed forward through the efforts of Trent Pottinger, Reg Jones and Max Fasolo to enable Jackson Bowen to kick 2 goals, followed up with one from Kade McKeown to finish the quarter 23 points in front.
Coach Bolton would have been reasonably happy with this result at half time as the Cougars were starting to play some good wet weather football by backing one another up and finding chests with some accurate kicking.
The rain began to ease in the third quarter and this enabled the Cougars to take complete control of the game with all players starting to play as a team. This led to Kade McKeown, Max Fasolo, Christiano Paduano and Ashton McGowan kicking goals to put the Cougars in an unassaible position to win.
In the last term the weather became worse as both teams strived to gain possession in the slippery conditions. Added to this, it became very dark and difficult to pick the numbers on team strips. Spectators were calling for the ground lights to be turned on so they could see the players! Later I was told there is some ruling regarding turning ground lights on during day games?
Regardless of this the Cougars went on to win by 39 points and now finish 2 games clear on the top of the C1 PFL ladder.
Final scores: Kalamunda: 10.12 – 72, Ballajura: 4.9 – 33
Other final round games:
C1 Reserves: Kalamunda: 4.13 – 97, Ballajura: 1.3 – 9
C5 League: Kalamunda: 4.9 – 33, Wanneroo: 14.5 – 89
C5 Reserves: Kalamunda: 9.10 – 64, Wanneroo: 4.3 – 27
Colts: Kalamunda: 8.8 – 56, Ballajura: 1.1 – 7
Ladies: Kalamunda: 7.7 – 49, Roleystone: 1.2 – 8
This Weeks Topic: More Milestones for the Cougars
Next Weeks game: C1 Thornlie V’s Kalamunda, 03.05 Saturday 9 August, 2025 Thornlie Oval.
This post is dedicated to, GROUNDFORCE WA
proud sponsors of the Kalamunda ‘Cougars’ Football Club.
GROUNDFORCE WA proudly servicing the mining, civil, fire suppression and power generation industries throughout WA.
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