On paper, it looked like yet another last quarter fade-out from the Rebels, but Saturday showed signs of improvement in that area.
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While the Greater Western Victoria Rebels suffered a 17-point defeat at the hands of Murray Bushrangers, after trailing by a point going into the final term, coach Marc Greig said there were positives.
The Rebels’ last quarters have been an area of concern for the developing group. It has lost two matches after leading at three quarter-time while from its opening four last quarters of the season leading into the weekend, it had a scoring differential of -98 points to its opposition (conceding 20.12 (132) in last quarters, while scoring 5.4 (34) themselves)
On Saturday it lost the last term by 16 points, but Greig said the manner in which it stemmed the flow was a vast improvement.
There was just five points separating the teams with 90 seconds remaining, before the Bushrangers kicked a goal, followed by another one after the siren – blowing the margin out.
"It was pleasing to improve on our fourth quarters from previous games where teams have kicked five or six goals to nothing,” Greig told The Courier.
"Up until 90 seconds to go, it was game on.
"We've certainly been in the games.”
Greig said it was not unrealistic to think his side could quite easily boast a 4-1 win/loss record, as the Bushrangers do, instead of its 1-4 ledger if it had finished off some of its good work.
Greig said it was definitely not a fitness issue and felt the group needed to continue to take strides towards managing those tight-finish situations and cut out costly "basic errors".
"When you look at the season, it's an opportunity gone begging. We've played five games and instead of being 4-1, which we comfortably could've been, we're 1-4.
“If we had some more polish and made the most of our chances...we could've been 4-1.
"The pleasing part, and we need to keep reminding our boys, we've done so much right...we don't want them to get too down in the dumps.
"But we need to get in the routine of winning these close ones.”
The Rebels will also wait to assess the severity of young gun Jed Hill’s foot injury.
Hill was looking lively in attack but left the field in the third quarter.