Cougars’ tough road home

By Gavin Staindl
SPRINGVALE/BERWICK coach Simone Wearne has demanded her team members change their attitude as the Cougars went down 9-2 to Werribee with tougher challenges ahead in the coming weeks.
Making the trip to President’s Park, the Cougars were outplayed in every aspect of the game after a sluggish start and from the second innings were never in contention for the win.
Werribee scored two runs in the second innings and more in the third to put Springvale/Berwick on the back foot from the outset.
Cougars’ starting pitcher Jacinda Barclay continued to struggle, giving up six walks, including three lead-off walks and finished with six earned runs from four innings.
In the field, errors again ushered in runners for Werribee and only Janine Cavanagh’s fielding efforts in the deep salvaged what was a lacklustre day on defence.
Shae Lillywhite was the only saviour for the Cougars as she hit three of the team’s five hits and also relief pitched for Barclay in the last three innings.
Lillywhite, who plays shortstop and has a shoulder injury, gave up only two earned runs in her time at the mound.
Injured coach Wearne has called on her players to “challenge themselves and to do better”.
Wearne pointed to the team’s attitude problems and lack of depth that had led to only two wins since the beginning of December.
“We have three or four really good players but our bottom order players aren’t great. We struggle for depth,” Wearne said.
“We don’t seem to care. We seem to have heaps of players turning up late… maybe it is because we are just coming back from the break, I don’t know,” Wearne said.
With Lillywhite, Wearne and two others from the Berwick/Springvale team heading to Hong Kong in two weeks to play in a baseball tournament, the Cougars will have to learn quickly how to manufacture runs without the big names taking the charge.
Considering the Cougars have big games against Malvern and Doncaster in the next two weeks, the Cougars could quickly find themselves at the bottom of the finals heap when finals begin in a month.
Meanwhile, in only the fourth time this year, Berwick can celebrate winning both the men’s and women’s matches in the one week as the Division Two Berwick men’s team smashed Footscray 16-6 at Cyril Molyneux Reserve.
The win is Berwick’s fourth win of the season but continues their recent run of form that carried over from the Christmas break.
Coach Wayne Porter was not available for comment when the paper went to print.