Claremont heartbreak after one-point Semifinal loss

John Townsend

Another devastating final minute; another heart-breaking final loss.

Claremont’s season came to a crashing end at Rushton Park on Sunday when Peel kicked a goal with 41 seconds left to win the first semifinal by one miserable point.

The lost match was painful but the lost opportunity was the most galling element of the encounter.

Claremont monstered the Thunder for most of the intense and pulsating contest.

The Tigers laid 30 tackles in the first term, surely a club record on a dry day, and finished with 87.

They went inside 50 five more times than their opponent, had six more shots at goal, won one more ruck contest, stood up when repeatedly when required, moved the ball better and mostly controlled the match.

And yet they lost by the smallest possible margin.

For those numerous Claremont supporters in Mandurah who were also present when Swan Districts won the 2010 grand final by the same margin, watched South Fremantle survive by three points in the 2020 decider and 2006 preliminary, and saw West Perth hang on by 12 points in 2022, it was a familiar and bitter tale of what might have been.

Instead, Peel will take on a battered Swan Districts in the preliminary final next Sunday before the winner confronts an East Perth team that Claremont beat twice this year.

The scoreline in the 7.7 (49) to 6.12 (48) result underlines the differences between the teams.

Claremont had more chances but couldn’t take them; Peel grabbed their fewer opportunities and took them, particularly when dual premiership veteran Blair Bell called on his vast experience to steady and shoot accurately from 40 metres when he found rare space in front of goals with less than a minute to go.

The energetic Zac Mainwaring had put Claremont in front by 17 points halfway through the last term but the visiting team could not hang on as Peel’s AFL-listed forwards imposed themselves on the game.

Fremantle tall Pat Voss got free of the adhesive Jack Maibaum to take a couple of steepling marks,

Matt Taberner converted a holding the ball free in the crowded goal square then added another from a strong mark before Bell pounced on Liam Reidy’s tap to snatch the lead for the first time in 45 minutes.

Alex Manuel was chaired off after finishing his career with a series of ferocious efforts in the dying minutes, including an extraordinary long-range volley from heavy traffic that floated off line in the final few metres of its flight.

Manuel contributed to a rapid three-goal burst in the third term, with Alec Waterman matching his 50m strike while Kieran Gowdie won a ferocious ground level contest before soccering truly from close range.

Manuel finished the season as Claremont’s leading goal kicker with his 31 majors followed by those two players. He kicked 183 in 121 league matches.

That five-minute onslaught was the most fluent football Claremont produced in the game but could not be sustained in the last quarter as coach Ashley Prescott urged his players to use their hearts and their heads.

“We are the sum of every moment, we are the sum of each other,” Prescott said in one of the most stirring addresses in his eight-year tenure at the club.

Teenage defender Josh Howard returned to the team in place of the injured Martin Frederick but it was an uncharacteristically nervy and fumbly group that failed to take its early chances before Waterman converted a strong mark inside 50.

The second quarter turned into the trench warfare urged by Prescott at the first break with the highlight a superb third-effort tackle from Sam Alvarez that brought a holding-the-ball free and clever set shot from close to the boundary.

Scores were level at half-time but the move of Rogers to defence in the third term, when the strong breeze favoured Peel’s scoring end, proved a masterstroke.

Rogers won the ball 10 times, twice with contested intercept marks, and provided the impetus to take advantage of Ollie Eastland’s strong performance against the giant Reidy.

Eastland had 40 hit-outs to Reidy’s 44 but was busier around the ground where he had 15 disposals and laid a game-high 21 tackles.

Jye Bolton’s playing future may be decided over summer but if he does not continue, he leaves

Claremont having produced one of the most selfless and mature displays of his glittering career.

The dual Sandover medallist, who has missed just two matches in his nine seasons at Claremont, finished with 20 touches – below his career average of 29 – but repeatedly put himself where he could have the most impact.

Bolton’s only blemishes came in the last term when he had two long shots at goal for one behind and an out-on-the-full.

Eastland maintained his remarkable form this season to shade the bigger Reidy but Peel had the better of the stoppages all game, winning four more clearances and kicking seven goals to two from clearances.

The move of Bell onto the ball, after Will Brodie received a severe cork and had to move forward, not only boosted Peel’s midfield influence but put him in the perfect position to break Claremont hearts in the final minute.

PEEL 2.2 3.2 4.5 7.7 49
CLAREMONT 1.5 2.8 5.8 6.12 48

GOALS – PEEL: Taberner 3; Bell, Emmett, O’Driscoll, Voss.
CLAREMONT: Waterman 2; Alvarez, Gowdie, Manuel, Mainwaring.

BEST – PEEL: Erasmus, O’Driscoll, Reidy, Bell, Taberner, Hughes.
CLAREMONT: Rogers, Eastland, Bolton, Maibaum, Mainwaring, Waterman.