Miners fall at first hurdle

By Gavin Staindl
THE old adage is you need to crawl before you walk, and the Berwick Miners gridiron team is still on its knees.
The young Miners were stopped in their tracks after a comprehensive 39-0 clobbering against the Rangers in round one of the Victorian Gridiron season.
In defence the lines were broken with ease and offensively the passing game failed to find targets.
“I don’t pump people’s tyres up,” coach Mel Martin said.
“I told them after the game what went wrong and where we needed to be better. We made mistakes that you could classify as rookie mistakes.
“In defence we made good stops over one or two downs but we didn’t tackle correctly and that allowed for many first downs and big gains,” Martin said.
The new-look defence that features only two from the 11 starters in last year’s season tried hard but were lacking experience.
Compounding the problem was starting quarterback Andrew Nixon who looked unsettled and nervous in the pocket.
Nixon, who Martin admits was lacking confidence, appeared shaken in his debut and consistently missed targets.
Recognising that the game plan was beginning to crumble, Martin resorted to the run to help out the team.
Fortunately, running backs Scott Sunderland and Sam Walker both hit the packs hard and gained valuable yards for the Miners.
“We changed the game plan to the run and that worked … when we went back to the throwing game which we have practised all pre-season the delivery again let us down,” Martin said.
But Martin is hopeful that the passing game will begin to improve.
“We have a lot of rookies and second year players and we were getting our receivers open,” Martin said.