Mines Rovers rally to inflict Railways’ first defeat of 2024 GFL season

Mines Rovers on Saturday allayed coach Marc Johnstone’s fears coming off a three-week break when they held Railways to their lowest score of the season in an 11-point win, 8.7 (55) to 6.8 (44), over the Goldfields Football League’s previously unbeaten premiership favourites.

Following back-to-back byes, the Diorites made their first appearance since June 29.

But they made it count with a two-goal-to-none last term that sealed the blue-and-whites’ eighth win and ended Railways’ undefeated run at 11 games.

It was an important box ticked-off for Johnstone, who lauded a largely unheralded defensive unit who held their opponents goalless in two of the four quarters.

After trailing at half-time, Railways turned for home with a four-point lead but added just a solitary behind.

“It was a really good game of footy — led by our backline who I thought were tremendous and really held the fort,” Johnstone said.

“Jaron Schmidt held Jack Steel nicely which made Railways change their structures by running Steel through the midfield and (Chris) Yarran was held to one (goal), as someone who usually gets hold of us.

“Kodee Lowe was moved back there and they’re all pretty young, but I thought they each did a tremendous job.”

Lowe was judged best-on-ground in Saturday’s clash for the Borchet-Dellar Cup, honouring the impact at both clubs by Graeme Borchet and Merv Dellar.

Railways piled on 3.3 to quarter-time, but they quickly lost captain Alex Stuart to a red card that swung the momentum in Mines Rovers’ favour.

The Panthers’ struggles in the second term produced two behinds and while they regained the lead with 3.2 in the third quarter, they couldn’t run-out the game.

Mines Rovers have Rory Gurr, Jake Douglas and Delson Trott waiting in the wings ahead of this Saturday’s derby clash with Boulder.

“This (win) gives us a lot more confidence,” Johnstone said.

“It’s proof that we can beat them (Railways) and have beaten them, but our main focus is to finish in second spot and we need to make sure that we don’t slip-up.

“The only way to avoid that is to just keep winning games between now and the finals series.”

Mines Rovers hold down second spot over Boulder by two games and percentage.

Railways’ previous lowest-score in 2024 was 13.8 (86) in a round eight win over Boulder, but coach Rhett Pettit was quick to put the result into perspective.

“Going into the game, I thought it was probably the most vulnerable we’d been all year with eight or nine who were unavailable,” he said.

“(Last) Friday night (at selections) I picked 20 players, others came in who were perhaps a bit under-done, were of colts-age or hadn’t even trained with us yet, and we lost Kyle Ryder in the opening 10 minutes.

“Alex Stuart got that red card halfway through the second quarter and Hamsey (Kyle Hams) ended up hurting his ankle, but played out the game.

“A few things impacted us, but I thought it was a pretty courageous effort.

“Obviously you never enjoy losing and for 15 minutes there, we played with 17 players and didn’t concede a goal.

“It showed that when we’re switched on and focused, we’re right around the mark, and we learned a lot from it —probably more so in defeat, as opposed to getting away with a win that we really didn’t deserve to have.”

Pettit put an interesting take on the red-and-blacks’ perfect run ending.

“You want to win every game but at the end of the day, I was sick and tired of people talking about us being undefeated,” he said.

“You get the same medal on grand final day if you win 16 games or 12, really.

“We’ve had that loss now that stops people talking about it which was just an added distraction, to be honest.

“We know what we have to work on (and) we go away and work harder.

“The best thing is that we get another opportunity this weekend to play footy again.”