VAFA Team News

The St Bedes/Mentone Tigers Amateur Football Club is pleased to announce that Michael Hazell has been appointed senior coach for the 2019 season.
Michael comes to the Tigers with a wealth of playing and coaching experience in the VAFA and VFA/VFL, along with spending time as a player on Collingwood’s supplementary list.
Michael has had a long connection with the VAFA. In a journey where he has experienced both the highs and the lows, he has held senior coaching and under 19 coaching roles in the divisional level of the VAFA, coaching the teams to finals in each year.
He is a triple premiership player across both the lower and higher divisions of the VAFA, including senior premierships at Premier A and Premier B level including the Tigers 2008 Premier A premiership team.
In recent years, Michael was a Board member and then President of the VAFA. During his time at Board level, Michael was responsible for the VAFA representative football program as the director of representative football, which role included holding positions as co-coach and assistant coach for many of the VAFA representative teams including the senior representative team.
In the role as director of representative football, Michael was also responsible for the appointment and management of the coaches within the representative football program.
In appointing Michael, the club was very attracted to his emphasis on coaching the entire club, players and coaches alike.
His coaching model aligned very closely with what the club was looking for in order to create sustainable long term success in the VAFA, not just at the critical senior level, but more broadly across all the teams at our club.

The Seniors recorded their second win of the season by the narrowest of margins with a come from behind win over Old Xaverians. Trailing by over 6 goals during the 2nd quarter, the Tigers turned the game around during the 3rd quarter, kicking 6 goals to 2. Pushing on into the final stanza, the Tigers took the lead, only to have the visitors wrestle it back with 5 minutes remaining. The Tigers dug deep and Nathan Smith found himself on the end of fast break. He kicked truly, recording his 5th major for the day and putting the home team 2 points to the good. With little time remaining, the ball pinged between the defences before Old Xavs drove forward to mark on the arc on a 45 degree angle. The siren blew, leaving the result to be determined by the last kick of the day. As that final kick drifted east of its intended target, disappointment for the visitors; jubilation and inspiration for the home side. Go Tigers!!!

Goal Kickers: N. Smith 5, S. Richards 2, G. Rowlands 2, R. Iudica, J. Cowan, S. Wines, B. O''Toole 
Best Players: N. Smith, G. Rowlands, S. Tahana, K. Beveridge, L. Mirams, D. Garside

Left: Steven Tahana's spectacular 3rd quarter mark.

Teamwork and perserverance	Rewards

St Bedes/ Mentone Tigers had a frustrating day on a superb surface against Old Trinity at Bulleen on Saturday.

• Trinity opened with a rush and were too quick and well-drilled for the Mentone team who held steadfast to only trail by 2 goals at the first break
• The second quarter was similar to the first but the Tigers started to catch and tackle the Green team in the second half of the quarter albeit without it showing on the scoreboard
• The second half was quite the antithesis of the first with St Bede's dominating the play, refusing to allow Trinity to run and spread and reigning the deficit in to 10 points at the last break and looking the likely winner with all the momentum
• Mentone came out of the blocks in the last and peppered the goals only to add 3 behinds before OTs goaled against the run of play
• Not to be denied, the Tigers resumed dominance around the contest only to, again, fail to convert getting the deficit back to 6 points late in the quarter only for the final siren beat them in a game they probably should have won given their second half supremacy notwithstanding their obvious difficulty in converting on a perfect Saturday afternoon for football
• Best for the Tigers were Tom Tyquin, Steve Tahana, Lachie Mirams and Jim Colyvan while Nathan Smith bagged another 2 goals up forward
• The Reserves were beaten by a better team on the day but refused to yield and battled gamely all day to go down by 5 goals
• Best for the Ressies were Bryce Dinger, Mitch Johnstone and John Patounas
• This week (Saturday 28th), St Bedes/Mentone Tigers Seniors and Reserves are again at home at the Fortress against premiership favourites Collegians, while the Under 19s are away to Uni Blacks and the Under 19s Development team front St Kevin's at Southern Road

Pre-season Update:-

At last, this weekend we welcome the return of local footy to Mentone.....hooray.

Firstly though, it is with great pleasure that we congratulate Peter Duffy's Mentone Cricket Club Second XI on winning the premiership in their grade last weekend at Brindisi Street in front of a sizeable and nicely biased crowd.

Premierships at Mentone are grand - well done Tiges.

And now to the footy

St Bedes/Mentone Tigers take on the local rival Beaumaris at Brindisi Street this Saturday (24th March) in what has always been the local derby (except when Parkdale occasionally pop-up.....we do love an occasional local derby with Parkdale).

Get down on Saturday to watch Under 19s at 9.00 a.m., Reserves at 11.40 and Seniors commencing at 2.00 p.m. sharp all against Beaumaris - see you there.                         Gotta love watching the rivalry between us and Beauy.

Our Senior team has completed 2 practice matches in difficult conditions of unseasonal March heat and wind against Hastings at Hastings and Mazenod at Frankston. Both games eventuating in solid wins albeit there’s still plenty of improvement left in the tank.  Our Reserves and Under 19s also had excellent hit outs with good results.

A big announcement is the exciting news that former SBMT Senior Coach, VAFA and Ormond legend of the 80s, Russell Barnes, has joined our coaching panel. (Russell, it should be noted, was the first coach to ever lift the seniors out of the depths of C Grade into B Grade in 2003 followed by finals in 2004 - unluckily losing by 3 points to Old Ivanhoe). Welcome back Russ, great to have you in the Tiger pack again.

SBMT have added a number of ex-AFL and current and ex-VFL players (amongst others) to their list in what looks to be an exciting combination of current and new talent.