By Matt Barton

With an early sun beating down on a lush green JCG oval the two top sides after round one of this year’s SAFF took to the field to do battle. This game saw Johnny Briscoe of the Blues taking the field for his 50th game, joining Lars ‘the pensioner’ Hagberg and only a handful of others in accomplishing the feat.

The men of Söder took to the field missing a couple of players including key forward Kaj ‘The Kaj’ Karlsson (emergency call up to the national Finnish drinking team) and field marshall/ruckman Mik Larsson (twisted sock), though Årsta were also missing players the most notable the influential Glenn Mcleod.

The first quarter got underway with Årsta ruckman Duncan Matheson setting the tone for what would be a domineering display in ball ups around the ground by winning the tap-outs. With some swift movement in the midfield Söder found themselves exposed and on the back foot quickly going behind to an Årsta goal. Depite the best efforts of the Blues to establish a foothold, Årsta kept on coming continuing to pile on the pressure and kick goals.

After coming out of a quarter time dressing down the Blues started the way they left off conceding a couple of early goals to Canadian Swan Tony. However shortly after Söder started getting their hands on the ball more, with Lars ‘lethal‘ Hagberg offering much needed assurance at the back, and started moving forward. The result was a couple of goals from 50th game man Johnny Briscoe and a superb bobbling goal from midfielder Liam ‘the music man’ Brown, even if his celebrations were a little premature. Even with this renewed vigour far too often the forward supply from the Söder midfield found Årsta’s roaming center half back Rob Young who snuffed out attacks just when Söder got a whiff of goal.

After some half time soul searching and staring over a precipice the Blues came out looking like a different team. Getting to the ball first and putting their bodies on the line the boys upped their possession, disposals and running in the midfield, most notably through (players player) Oscar ‘the o-train’ Löfgren (who played on despite a twisted ankle), finding their forwards free in the pockets to kick the goals to bring them back into the game.

With the game perfectly poised going into the fourth quarter Södermalm got their backs up and realizing they needed to strike fast and early moved the ball into the forward line where Andrew Rundle slotted a neat set shot from the left hand pocket. The Blues forwards followed this up with successive goals however the Swans were far from done. Piling forward in search of the goals to play catch up the boys in white continued to press and were only denied by the tightness of the backline, anchored by (short) Full Back Chris Tancredi (pictured courtesy of Rob Scott).

After a hard fought game where bones were rattled and ego’s rocked the Blues won out by a final score of 103 to 82 no doubt both sides will look forward to the second game!

Söder maintain their perfect record and go into a well earned bye this weekend starting to switch their focus to the second round of Eliteserien against Helsingborg Saints this coming Saturday 23rd May in Helsingborg.

#AFLSweden #SodermalmBlues #AFLEurope