Harper Sercombe
It was a Vic Bowl rematch in the Gridiron Victoria competition on Saturday as the Western Crusaders took on rivals the Croydon Rangers.
The sides last faced off when the Crusaders took out their fifth straight championship with both sides beginning this week’s clash as the last remaining undefeated sides in the competition.
The Crusaders are now standing aloft the table as the only undefeated side with a 34-12 win.
Speaking before the game, the Crusaders’ Tyson Garnham said he was expecting a tough, physical encounter.
“We battle for top spot this weekend against Croydon so the club is looking forward to that opportunity to consolidate top spot,” he said.
“The Rangers have got quite a good offence, they’ve got some really good receivers so we’re expecting them to lean on that.
“If our defence can shut down that element of their game then we should be right to play our physical style against them which is what we’ve done in the past has been more physical than Croydon so we expect to do the same this week.”
Being the only side in the competition with two teams has continued to play in the club’s favour, Garnham said, with plenty of players to choose from helping the firsts to keep up their winning form.
“The beauty of our team is everybody shares the load, we’ve had a lot of people on injury as well, so everyone has been rotating through the side,” he said.
“We don’t really have the same player being best on ground every week, it sort of rotates through each game depending on who’s playing quarterback or who’s playing receiver.
“The benefit of having two senior teams is that everyone gets game time across the two sides but that also gives us a lot of depth to pull from to be quite solid on both offence and defence.
“We’ve always been strong on defence and I guess over the past few seasons the offence has been clicking because we’ve had the same quarterback for the past few seasons now, so getting the cohesion coming together.”
While the side rotates through its quarterbacks, last season’s most valuable player in the competition Matthew Krul remains as the club’s premier quarterback. However, with players on the first team beginning to age has opened the door for young talent to be bled.
“We’ve got a few quarterbacks and earlier in the year we were also able to break in some of the under-17 quarterbacks into the men’s team,” Garnham said.
“We’ve got a lot of experienced players who have played together for a while, and are also trying to get the new talent coming through, which is exciting for the future.”
