Our first official DAFL game for 2023 took us on the road trip to Århus to take on West Denmark. After a pre-game fuel loading of burgers and fries, we arrived with only 15 mins to prepare and warm up. With 5 players making their DAFL debut (Danksy, Will, Jake, Jeremy and Ryan) it was exciting to see how the team was going to click. It took us a while to get our bearings on the oval – laid at 45° across the existing rugby pitch with an interesting choice of not-so-eye-catching mission-brown paint for the pvc goal posts. West DK got a jump on us scoring the first goal before we realised we were only using half the available ground. Scotty W continued his red hot Parisian form and steadied the ship down back.

As coach, I was enjoying watching the ball go deep into their forward line just to see our backs do their thing. Christian P was too tough for his talented opponent and gave him nothing all day. In the middle, Danksy was starting to light things up and hit the scoreboard multiple times early. Kane was up to his usual lead with the head style of play, and once he took a big hit, he was back to his usual unstoppable self. Ryan found his feet (and those magical hands) as the game progressed, dominating the taps and plucking some strong marks around the ground. Elliot was reading the game well and putting himself in dangerous positions, and despite having early trouble finding the not-so-big brown sticks, he found his aim and finished the game with a nice bag of 6.

In the second half, we found our team game…the blueprint for what our opposition can expect from us this year. The linking up handball, overlap running that we’ve been working on at training was a sight to behold. The trust was building and the more we tried it, the more naturally it came to us. Will (the Weapon) was dangerous all day with his straightline running and exquisite skills and Jake was getting plenty of action around goals. Jack showed glimpses of his elite skills, while Pagey and Kaj began linking up in some stunning runs through the middle. Sam M was causing constant headaches for West all day up forward and was dynamic in his pack work, dishing out hard ball gets to the runners. Rasmus was providing a good target up forward and Jeremy’s sure ball handling set up multiple forward plays.

Scotty’s hanger and Danksy’s sweet strike from 50 gave us some great highlights to remember. The game was played with great spirit from both sides which I want to see continue throughout the season…a bunch of super talented guys enjoying a tough fought game of footy. Hats off to West DK for their great sportspersonship and to Morten for stepping up with the whistle.