PARKSIDE remedied its Watton Street hoodoo with a 15-point win over Wyndhamvale
Falcons in the Western Region Football League division 2 qualifying final at
Avalon Airport Oval on Saturday.
The Magpies have endured a long streak of bad
results at the ground in the recent years and are hoping the victory will
prove a turning point for future trips up the Princes Highway.
“We’ve had a bit of a hoodoo down at Werribee,” Magpies vice-captain Chris
Muratore said.
“We hadn’t won there for about four years.
“For a few of us, we just wanted to get a win to able to sing the song
there.”
Aside from the exorcism of the negative vibes, a much bigger prize is on
offer for the Magpies.
They will get the first crack at undefeated minor premiers Yarraville-Seddon
Eagles in the second semi-final at Crofts Reserve on Saturday.
You get a sense that if any team is going to ruffle the Eagles’ feathers, it
will be the Magpies.
Time and again this season, they have proven to be the best of the rest and
done it at a variety of venues and under varying conditions.
Significantly, the wider expanses of the finals venues no longer daunts them.
Muratore said big grounds were no longer the Magpies’ Achilles heel.
“We’ve just got more depth through the midfield. Now we can rotate 10 to 11
players through so we’ve always got that extra bit of run, where we used to rely
on four or five blokes.
“It’s especially important on a big ground like Werribee where we’ve probably
been found out a couple of times in the past couple of years.
“We’re able to use the bench a lot more, which gave us the fresh legs to keep
running for the whole game.”
The Magpies – kings of the clearances for a long time – showed they have not
neglected that part of the game.
They smashed the Falcons at the stoppages with Paul Clemente, Nick Grant,
Jimmy Franklin and Muratore prominent.
“We were first to the footy,” Muratore said. “That pretty much won us the
game.”
The Magpies had their noses in front by two goals at half-time.
