IT was certainly one of the darkest days in Smythesdale’s history, but senior coach Stephen Frys says there’s no smell of death surrounding the Central Highlands Football League club.
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Social media was abuzz (see below) on Saturday night with news of the Bulldogs’ mammoth 429-point loss to Gordon, which booted 69 goals in a demolition job on home soil.
A total of 19 players kicked majors for Gordon, including bags of 19 from Steve Nicholson and 12 by Mick Nolan.
And while Frys admitted a lot of the hard work to make the Bulldogs a competitive unit in 2015 had been undone, he hopes the result is a just an aberration.
“As bad as the result was, it doesn’t reflect the progress we’ve made this season. If people read the paper and see those results they’ll think ‘what are they doing?’.
“They need to take a step back and look at where we were last year and the first five games we’ve cut margins by around 15 goals on average,” Frys said.
“If this happened again for the next two or three weeks, you’d think something’s not right there but, as it stands, it’s a one-off for us and we are treating it as a one-off bad day and we are going to be looking forward to the next game.”
Frys said Saturday’s line-up was the most undermanned the club had put on the ground this season and he heaped praise on Gordon, who he declared a “super side”.
“(Smythesdale players) tried all day. There’s no doubt they tried and not at one point did they give up, but we were just really undermanned and just outplayed,” he said.
Frys said there hadn’t been any talk of the club folding or moving to a different competition following the defeat, with people looking instead at how the Bulldogs could improve and fix the current situation.
“Until there’s just no other options, and probably the way it’s looking it probably is getting towards that, but we haven’t spoken about (shifting) as yet,” he said.
Smythesdale has not won a game since a round two victory over Skipton in 2011 – when known as Illabarook.
After a truly disastrous 2014 season that registered just 92 points and a percentage of 2.28, the Bulldogs had shown some promising signs in the opening five games of the year.
This latest defeat is a setback, but Frys said his team would come out with a “point to prove” against Dunnstown following this weekend’s interleague break.
tim.oconnor@fairfaxmedia.com.au
