Bull Sharks v Gold Coast Suns
It felt like an intra club scratch match when a rusty Bull Sharks outfit had their first competitive hit out in a trial against the Gold Coast Suns Academy at Austworld Centre on Sunday.
With so many Bull Sharks representing the Suns, coach Andy Lovell knew his girls were going to be in for a tough day.
Scores weren’t kept but the Suns got the better of the encounter and gave Lovell plenty to work on over the final few weeks of the preseason.
The objective
“Given we hadn’t trained for two weeks it was important to get kilometres into the legs of as many of our players as we could. So we used 37 players and gave them a half a game each. We were very rusty and definitely needed the run. They were cleaner in the contest and their ability to run the ball out of contests and overlap was where they won the game."
What made you happy
'We were just thrilled to be able to get a game in at all given the impact of Cyclone Alfred. We have now got game time into three quarters of our squad which is critical to our preparation, so we are very happy with that. We showed glimpses of the frontal pressure on defence that we want to bring to the opposition and once this becomes second nature to all our players we will be hard to play against."
Bull Sharks Footy
"We have trained all summer to bring fierce frontal pressure to the opposition ball carrier and we saw really good signs of that."
Work to do
"With 27 new players this season, we are early days into creating synergy with our structures and ball use as well as our shape on defence."
Trademark Players
"Our 2025 Riewoldt Family AFL Excellence Scholarship recipient Charlie Adamson was strong in her first hit out after an ACL injury that kept her out of the game for a year. Sky White was a standout across half back, taking multiple intercept marks and rebounding strongly. Evy Reeves across half forward and through the midfield was composed with ball in hand and made good decisions. Brianna Moyes as a new recruit was in and under around stoppages and showed she will be an asset to us this year and Alicia Withers showed dash off half back."
With Andy Lovell