ESSENDON
Nine games unbeaten and nine wins from nine at Cross Keys, and most of it came apart before half time.
Keilor Park were three goals up at the interval. Sam Litchfield scored in the seventh minute, Rhys Saunders added the second in the thirty-seventh and Max Branov the third three minutes after that. Litchfield returned for his second in the fifty-second, Frank Mulhern pulled one back five minutes later, and 4-1 was the honest reflection of a night that got away early and never came back.
The substitution that shaped it belonged to the visitors. Sam O’Halleron, twelve goals for the season and the Keilor Park player the Royals had most reason to plan around, went off in the thirteenth minute. Saunders came on in his place and scored twenty-four minutes later, which is not how those changes usually go.
The Royals arrived without four of the side that won at Eastern Lions a week earlier, with captain Dean Clarke, Vince Lia, Brad Norton and Anthony Trajkoski all unavailable and Marcus Kotronis rested with a finals series in front of him. What that opened up was a night for the youngest players at the club. Kody Sapolu started in midfield at fifteen, and Bailee Kocankovski made his senior debut alongside him. Neither will want the scoreline as the memory, but there are worse educations than a full house of a Friday night at Cross Keys against a side chasing a play-off place.
Adrian Zahra returned from the bench as part of a triple change just before the hour, coming on with Sebastian Lo Monaco and Kotronis, and Mulhern’s goal arrived within a minute of the three of them entering. That was as close as the evening came to turning, and it turned no further.
Keilor Park take the season double, having won 1-0 at Keilor Park Recreation Reserve in May, and they are the only side in the division to beat the Royals twice this year. Cross Keys had produced nine wins from nine and thirty-five goals before Friday. This was the first home league defeat of the season, and the first anywhere since the end of May.
The table is still in reasonable shape. Third place on forty-seven points from twenty-five games, with a home play-off semi-final on 13 September secured regardless of what happens next, because nobody below can now reach the Royals. What Friday did cost was certainty about third. Bayside Argonauts sit fourth on forty-four with two games remaining and can reach fifty, so a win away at Moreland City on 29 August takes the Royals to fifty and settles third on goal difference, plus twenty-one against plus twelve. Anything less than three points at Campbell Reserve puts the question in Bayside’s hands.
There is a reason that matters beyond the ordering. Third plays sixth in the semi-final and fourth plays fifth, and fifth place is currently occupied by Keilor Park.