By JARROD POTTER
WOMEN’S GRIDIRON VICTORIA
A FINAL home-and-away season rampage led the Berwick Diamonds to a 72-0 thumping of the Ballarat Kestrels, despite some off-field challenges throwing the team before the match.
With Gridiron Victoria rescheduling the Diamonds’ kick-off to 10.45am – after a Geelong Buccaneers match was reallocated to Reservoir – Berwick arrived for its team photo-shoot and ended up frantically needing to pad up and get out onto Rawling Field or face a forfeit.
Diamonds’ coach Jamie Stafford just managed to get a 12-women minimum line-up together for the early kick-off before the rest of the team filtered in towards the previously scheduled start and filled up the lines.
It would be the only concern for the Diamonds as a nine-touchdown effort finished off Ballarat with ease.
Starting quarterback Vanessa Roman continued to shine with four touchdown passes the highlight of her year aerially as the Diamonds transition from a mostly rushing game towards a better balance between pass/rush.
She found Joanna Rashleigh and Renee Turner (two receiving touchdowns each) as Roman put up her best passing numbers of the season.
Streaming up the field, Bliss Love (three touchdowns), Larnie Gubatunga and Cat Bouwhis made the most of the ground game to all rack up extreme rushing yardage as the Kestrels could not keep up.
To cap off the dominant display, the Diamonds defence claimed its first intercept touchdown – Ashlee Sarna-Kosnar broke free to earn Berwick’s first pick-6.
Stafford threw the ball around as the score broke through the stratosphere and gave his back-up quarterback – Rashleigh – a run under centre and she showed some promise as the points piled up.
He highlighted his leaders on-field for their stellar matches – Roman and cornerback Aneen Groenwald – for their play-calling and ability to shut down the Kestrels.
“On the weekend everyone played their role and the two I’d single out were Vanessa Roman – her development playing the hardest role on the field has been outstanding and she took it to another level on the weekend – and Aneen Groenewald, defense, playing as one of our cornerbacks, had a great year as defensive player caller and was fantastic.”
The coach was pleased with the big score line and especially his quarterback’s long-passing to generate four touchdowns.
“That’s the problem with wins like that – it’s hard to know what worked and what actually didn’t,” Stafford said.
“A lot of what we did was good – the biggest positive for me was that we got our deep passing game going – our quarterback Vanessa threw four passing touchdowns and three of them were long, so that’s one thing I’d take out of the game.”
Berwick finished the regular season with a 4-1 record, earning the Diamonds second spot on the Gridiron Victoria women’s ladder as well as a home final for the first round of playoffs as they face the Northern Lady Raiders at 10.45am on Sunday.
“The coaching staff is very proud of the girls’ effort to make the finals in their first season of existence,” Stafford said.
“That said, once you make the finals, the natural competitive instinct kicks in and we want to go further still.
“We’re playing a team that we’ve played before – so we’ll watch game film on the other team and know what their strengths and weaknesses are before Sunday.”
