FIERCE pressure and greater hunger around the contest helped Hume League to one of their biggest representative victories in years on Saturday.
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Hume League produced a major representative upset when it upstaged Riverina League, 10.9 (69) to 8.14 (62) in a dour affair at Robertson Oval.
Hume League led for the majority of the contest and held off a late charge from Riverina to claim bragging rights with a seven-point win.
Long-serving Hume League official Barry Malone described it as one of the better wins in their competition’s history.
Hume League coach Josh Walker was equally as chuffed.
“Without a doubt, we have obviously got a lot of respect for the Riverina League and in our mind they are sort of the pinnacle of representative footy at our level,” Walker said.
“So coming up here on their home deck was obviously going to be a big challenge. I’ve been involved in three years and it’s the best win in terms of the quality of opposition. It’s fantastic.”
The contest proved to be a scrappy affair but a lot of that can be attributed to the pressure Hume League applied on their opponents throughout the contest.
Riverina got on top momentarily in the second term but could only open up an eight-point lead before Hume wrestled the momentum back with a couple of late goals.
The biggest margin pushed out to 19 points, in Hume’s favour, late in the final term, before Riverina failed in a very late surge.
Ultimately, Riverina’s gamble to go in without a recognised key forward or ruckman backfired and hurt them dearly with a lack of movement in attack, or targets to kick to.
They also used the ball poorly under great pressure from the visitors.
Hume League only had two training sessions but used an effective game plan to bring Riverina down.
“I put a real focus on trying to get some experience from club level into the side so we had club coaches, assistant coaches, captains – genuine leaders from club level come in so it’s easy for those guys to pick up what you’re after,” Walker explained.
“We worked on a couple of things during the week but tried to keep it basic so that they do the basic things really, really well, not too much information overload so I think that’s why we stuck to some things really well today and it worked.”
Duncan McMaster was awarded Hume League’s best player medal after a strong display in defence.
Kade Rowe was another stand-out, while Marty Bahr and Josh Gaynor worked hard all day.
John Anstee won Riverina’s best player medal with a typical big effort at centre-half-back.
