ESSENDON
Nothing separated the two sides at half time at Gardiners Creek Reserve on Friday night, and then the whole match arrived inside seventeen minutes.
Marcus Kotronis scored three minutes after the restart, Frank Mulhern added the second in the 53rd, Samuel Nasso pulled one back for Eastern Lions on the hour, and captain Dean Clarke restored the two-goal margin in the 65th. Four goals in one short stretch of the second half, at a ground where the first forty-five had produced none, and three points loaded onto the bus for the trip home.
The middle two of those tell you how the Royals played it. Mulhern’s was the Frank the Tank goal in its purest form, a run straight at the heart of the Eastern Lions defence that forced the goalkeeper off his line and finished past him before a covering defender could slide across. Twelve minutes later Clarke did something similar from a different angle, breaking clear and taking the ball beyond the keeper as he came out to meet him. Two goals, the same goalkeeper drawn out of his area twice inside twelve minutes, and a fairly clear instruction being followed about running at a back four that had spent forty-five minutes defending deep.
The Royals finish Round 24 third on 47 points from twenty-four games, fifteen wins, two draws and seven defeats, with a goal difference of plus 24. Holding that third place is now the most immediate piece of business, because with two rounds left it is not yet locked away. Bayside Argonauts are fourth on 44 from the same number of games, so the cushion is three points and two matches, which is no cushion at all.
Above us, the numbers are less kind. Malvern City are top on 53 points from twenty-four and Goulburn Valley Suns second on 51 from twenty-three, with a fixture in hand. Six points and four points, and only two games left to find them in. The honest reading is that first place now needs Malvern to lose everything in front of them, and second is the target still genuinely on the table, decided largely by what the Suns do with their extra match. Neither of those things is in our control, which is why the two games that are in our control carry the weight they do.
Eastern Lions end the round ninth on 26 points, six wins, eight draws and ten defeats, their goal difference tipping to minus one on the back of Friday. Eight draws in a season says plenty about the kind of night this had the makings of, and being level at the break was the version of it that suited them, not us. Winning from that position, away from Cross Keys, is worth more than a 3-1 scoreline reads.
It also makes four wins and a draw from the last five, and the Royals have not been beaten since the end of May. The reverse fixture back on 1 May finished 2-1 at Cross Keys, so this completes the season double over the Lions and adds another away result to a run that has been quietly building through winter.
The discipline is worth a note. All three yellow cards on the night went to Royals players, Zac Kocankovski in the 33rd minute, Anthony Trajkoski in the 68th and Julian Guzzardi in the 77th, while Eastern Lions finished without a booking. Kocankovski came off five minutes after his, which with two matches left and a squad that needs to stay available was the sensible way to manage it rather than gamble on it.
What is left is straightforward enough. Keilor Park come to Cross Keys next Friday night, then it is away to Moreland City on 29 August. Six points are available, the Royals will want all six, and everything beyond that gets decided in other people’s fixtures. A side chasing a top-two finish with two rounds to play does not get to pick the circumstances it wins in, and a goalless first half away from home is exactly the sort of circumstance that has cost this group points earlier in the season. On Friday it did not, and that is the habit worth taking into the last fortnight.