First-year Melbourne player Jamie Bennell gathers the ball at full pace on the weekend. 28336 Picture: Meagan RogersBy Marc McGowan
TORRENTIAL rain marred AFL football’s return to Casey Fields on Saturday.
The heavens opened up for several hours before the NAB Challenge match between the Casey Scorpions-aligned Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs and continued off and on for the rest of the day.
The game marked the Demons’ second NAB Challenge appearance at the Cranbourne East venue in as many years after they took on North Melbourne in 2008.
A massive downpour – combined with Casey Fields’ fabled wind – in the final term capped the miserable afternoon and sent many of the 5200 fans who braved the conditions dashing for their cars.
The Bulldogs won the match by 38 points after slamming on five goals and keeping Melbourne scoreless in the last quarter.
The final score was 14.17 (101) to 10.3 (63).
There was little between the sides in the first three terms as both clubs unveiled their stars in their final hit-outs before the home-and-away season.
Melbourne players on show included captain James McDonald, midfielders Cameron Bruce, Brock McLean and Brad Green and Berwick’s Stefan Martin.
The Bulldogs’ line-up featured reigning Brownlow medallist Adam Cooney, skipper Brad Johnson, on-baller Daniel Cross, 2001 Brownlow winner Jason Akermanis and former Narre Warren junior Matthew Boyd.
Demons’ coach Dean Bailey and his Bulldogs counterpart Rodney Eade praised how well the Casey Fields surface held up in the conditions.
Bailey also credited his club’s summer training at the ground for its improvement this season.
“The amount of volume we’ve done at training has helped because we’re coming off a low base and might only be just trying to catch up to where everyone else is,” he said. “We’ve at least been able to train at Casey and put a lot of work into them. Hopefully we’re just starting to get to the band where everyone else is. Time will tell and games will tell how competitive we are. We’re certainly more advanced than last year.”
Eade was impressed with the Casey Fields surface, but was not as glowing about the size of the changerooms.
“The ground’s in great nick, but, as an AFL venue, the rooms are a bit small,” he said.
“It’s certainly a good ground to play at – there’s no doubt about it – and we’d like to come out here again.”
Scorpions general manager Brian Woodman, who was hoping for a crowd of as much as 10,000 during the week, was satisfied with the attendance in hindsight.
“The majority of them were Melbourne supporters, so that was encouraging from an alignment perspective and also, obviously, the Casey Fields agreement that the council is doing,” he said.
“It downpoured for three hours before the game and we’ve never had a footy game here where it has rained for three hours before the game as much as that.
“The weather forecast on Friday was for rain all day, so anyone that was thinking about coming to the footy obviously wouldn’t have. “I thought the crowd was reasonable, given how wet it was and the forecast of weather that was given.”
