St Bedes/Mentone Tigers were well beaten by 64 points by De La Salle in boggy conditions at East Malvern on Saturday. After an even start, De La were first to thread the big sticks and with some hard running and ball movement eventually had another but the Tigers, kicking downhill, managed to reply to cut the margin, however, a quick reply from the home team extended their lead to 16 points at quarter time. In the second, St Bedes took control for the first 10 minutes but in the worst ground conditions seen in many years could not manage to trouble the scorers whereas the locals showed their mastery of their home by avoiding the bog in most sections of the ground to move the ball forward with excellent skills to negate the Tigers’ ball ascendency and hurt them on the scoreboard with consecutive goals – again the Tigers replied but nonetheless the Blue team took a comfortable 31 point margin into the long break
• Once again into the second half, the Mentone team through the skills and strong attack on the ball of Pat Kean and the hard running of Gavin Brown and Dan Garside were in control of the contest for the first 10-12 minutes but could only muster the single major before the Malvern team took over with some outstanding overlap running to bang on 3 majors to effectively end the contest with a 40 point lead at the final change.
• Into the last, Luke Wintle continued to be St Bedes leading light in his best performance for the year and Michael Wintle ran tirelessly and got just reward for his effort all day as yet again the Tigers held De La for the first 12 minutes before the quality of the locals shone through for them to extend their lead with four late goals to run out well-deserved 64 point victors and reclaim the La Sallian Challenge Cup. • The Reserves were outplayed and went down by 67 points, U19 Premier went down by 5 points in a close one while U19 South had a thoroughly deserved 5 point win over De La Salle at Brindisi Street.
• Next Saturday the Tigers return home to take on last year’s fellow Grand Finalist, Collegians, at Fortress Brindisi.