By Molly Magennis
Despite enduring its seventh loss of the season over the weekend against Hawthorn, Williamstown VFLW vice-captain Eliza Stratford said this year has been one of her favourite seasons of footy so far.
While Saturday’s game looked somewhat promising for the Seagulls at the end of the first quarter, the Hawks quickly stepped up and capitalised on an unfortunate mindset lapse from the Gulls, ultimately allowing them to run away with a 2.1 (13) to 9.8 (62) victory.
Stratford stepped up as captain on the weekend as Erin Meade continues to recover from a broken wrist.
She said she thought the first quarter was really competitive, and that he felt like her girls were really in the game. However, a shift in confidence heading into the second term caused the team to spiral downhill quicker than they would have liked.
“I think potentially from our side of things, I think our mindset kind of changed to be like, first quarter we said we’ll go out and give it a red hot crack and see what we can do,” she said.
“I guess when we kind of thought oh look, our best is actually on par with their best, then I think we put a bit of pressure on ourselves.
“I think in general, it was just a bit of a mindset thing, and then probably snowballed into a bit of a confidence drop, especially not being able to score in that second and third term.”
These mindset struggles have been a recurring struggle for Williamstown over the course of the season, particularly impacting those down in the forward line.
“We’ve seen some of our best footy played against some of the top sides and it’s just probably hitting the scoreboard, a drop in confidence that gets to I think quite a few of our team [members], because you can probably see that our backline is super strong in limiting or at least attacking once it gets into their forwardline, and our midfield won the clearances and were super strong,” she said.
“But it is getting into that forwardline and converting, it’s something that’s probably playing on the forward’s mind and the rest of the team’s mind.”
Having only tasted success on two occasions so far this year, Starford said it has been challenging coming back again and again after consecutive losses. However, the culture and the group of girls she gets to play with every week makes the drive and determination to keep going even stronger.
“That’s something that I guess keeps you wanting to get there every week, you know, commit those hours,” she said.
“Surprisingly, I feel like it is one of my favourite seasons of footy so far, even though we haven’t had as much success as I guess we wanted to have….this season. It’s definitely about the girls, the culture, and the club, it makes you realise why you play footy.
“It’s exciting and at least good to know that you know, even if the wins aren’t on the board it really does feel like such a successful season anyway.”
The Seagulls will play the Saints next on May 1 at Trevor Beach Oval at 9:45am.
