It’s called the snake pit for a reason. The feared St Bernards home deck can strike with venomous blows and constrict its opponents to within an inch of their life.
The Snowdogs were swift and decisive from the opening bounce which prolonged until the final siren.
The 96-point margin – Beaumaris’ biggest loss for the year – was a stark reminder that even a minor lapse in performance can have seismic consequences.
And there was no anti-venom at hand for the Sharks to arrest the pain.
“It wasn’t our best game. St Bernards were simply the better team,” Ben McLean said.
“An area we can improve on is shutting the opposition midfielders down by working on them and not letting them get easy exits.
“They had some good midfielders who won the ball and used it well, which made it hard to defend.”
Ruckman Callum Heath (ankle) and ball magnet Will Edmonds (knee) were fouled by the halfway mark of the first term, fatally stalling the Sharks’ midfield drive.
The Snowdogs deep brigade of on-ballers got the upper hand and peppered its forward-50 with a deluge of attacks.
“The backline held up fairly well given the circumstances,” he said.
“The ball spent a lot of time in the backline and was very hard to defend, given the time and space they had while kicking it into the forward line.
“Obviously with a massive loss, the backline and team will need to look into how we can stop so many goals being kicked and how we can shut them down in the future.”
Rob Cathcart (two goals) worked tirelessly around the ground, while Lewis Diggins – again – was devastating with his defensive counters.
But despite the 20.17 (137) to 6.6 (42) defeat, McLean still took some positives from the heavy loss.
“Although the scoreboard didn’t show it, we had some good ball movement in patches,” he said.
“I think a lot of players were shown what the best in the competition is and I’m sure with some vision from the game we can see what we did wrong and correct our mistakes for the games to come.”
It was a dark day for the reserves, too, who succumbed to its first loss of the season – 18.13 (121) to 4.7 (31).
But, fortunately, this Saturday provides an opportunity to atone for the uncharacteristic outing from the two senior teams when they return to Shark Park to take on the lowly Monash Blues.
