Emerald Season Preview

Men’s Football

In 2022 Emerald finished fourth with a 10-8 record and lost in the Semi Final to Berwick Springs by 22, after fighting it out until the final siren.

In 2023, the Bombers will be hoping that they can get off to a fast start again, following a 6-1 start in 2022.

What they won’t want again is to win just four of their final 11 games.

They are a team who know they can beat anyone, beating Gembrook Cockatoo (Premiers) by two points and Berwick Springs by 42, early in the season.

Defensively, they are quite a strong team, conceding just 65 points per game. Their forward line is reasonably strong and was headlined by 45 goals to Patrick Chin.

Chin has departed for season 2023 but a major boost for Emerald is the off-season signing of gun David Johnson, crossing from Yarra Junction.

Further additions to Emeralds line up are mainly coming from Cranbourne with the Russo brothers and Mitchell White headlining those.

Emerald ranked second in 2022 for contested disposals, with 88.8, second for marks inside 50 (11.6), second in clearances (39) and first in inside 50s (55.3) and tackles. (71)

This highlights the pressure and effort that Emerald bring and is perhaps confirmation that they’re a better team than what the 2022 ladder shows.

In 2023 they will be looking to go deeper into finals.

 

Netball

Emerald will be looking to be amongst the thick of the finals action again in 2023, following a strong season in 2022. They finished third with an 11-6-1 record.

Third was fitting as they were clearly better than the teams below them (during the H&A season at least) and were not quite to the standard of the two standout teams in Seville and Berwick, which is not an easy task to be fair.

Unfortunately for Emerald they lost to Yarra Glen in the Semi Final, a team that they beat three times during the H&A season.

Despite this, they are still a very strong team and will be looking to go an extra step or two further in 2023.

They scored 46 goals per game last year and conceded 42 per game, ranking them third offensively and fourth defensively.

The two Loulantings; Kayla and Suria were phenomenal, with the former shooting 440 goals and the latter managing an impressive 247 from 15 games. Both Kayla and Suria made Team of the Year.

Jammy Scott, among others also had a great year, especially at the back end of the year.

Keep an eye out for Emerald in 2023 and see whether or not they can take an extra step or two.

 

Written by Jordan Peeler