Vanessa Hellar was one of the Casey Comets’ few shining lights as they lost 1-0 to the Bendigo Vipers at Beischer Oval on Saturday. Picture: Luke Plummer.By Marc McGowan
‘MATHEMATICALLY’ has been a regular word in Casey Comets coach Deborah Nichols’ vocabulary in recent weeks as the team’s fortunes have fluctuated drastically.
But it was used in a different context this week, with Nichols ruling out finals for the first time and instead saying her team could “mathematically” still be relegated.
It is a surreal prospect for Casey after a decade of top-five placings.
The proud club finds itself closer to relegation than finals action after a disastrous 1-0 loss to the Bendigo Vipers at Strathdale’s Beischer Oval on Saturday.
Not only was the game the Comets’ third straight loss, it was also the third week running that they failed to score.
Casey welcomed tireless worker Belinda Powell back into the line-up, but lost teenage forward Lisa Cloke, who was playing for Victoria in a national secondary schools tournament in Darwin.
Cloke would have been unavailable anyway after receiving a red card against Box Hill in the previous round for two yellow card indiscretions.
The Comets did not even look like scoring, however, and only produced a couple of half chances in a dour struggle.
The Vipers were hardly dominating offensively either, but had more opportunities and a 30th-minute strike by Maika Ruyter-Hooley gave them a deserved half-time lead.
It proved to be all Bendigo needed to claim the points, with Casey’s limp attack failing to conjure up the equaliser.
Nichols said her squad did not deserve to win, but stopped short of labelling the result as the team’s worst of the year.
“Compared to how we played the week before (against Box Hill) we did not play well,” she said.
“We probably had this discussion early in the year – we get up for the top sides, but there is not the same mental application against other sides and I’m not sure why.”
With finals off the radar, Nichols has given her players a goal of finishing in sixth place.
“Like I said at half-time, everyone has got individual pride and we’ll be looking to get into the best position we possibly can,” she said.
“In all bar four games we’ve been right in there with a chance, so over the year it has not been terribly awful, but we’ve only had goal scorers in the threes and twos – we’ve had no-one scoring 15 goals.”
After a hat-trick of one-goal defeats, the Comets’ reserves were pummelled 3-0 by the Vipers in the curtain raiser.
Casey returns to Comets Stadium on Sunday to battle Melbourne University, with the reserves on first at 11am before the seniors search for that elusive goal at 1pm.
