First published June 20, 2015
NORTH MELBOURNE 6.2 10.4 13.5 18.9 (117) GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY 1.4 4.8 8.12 8.13 (61)
GOALS North Melbourne: Nahas 4, MacMillan 3, Waite 3, Petrie 2, Higgins 2, Brown, Cunnington, Harvey, Atley. Greater Western Sydney: Palmer 3, Stewart 2, McCarthy, Cameron, Griffen.
BEST North Melbourne: Higgins, Goldstein, Dal Santo, Nahas, Petrie. Greater Western Sydney: Griffen, Ward, Palmer, McCarthy, Shaw.
Injuries: North Melbourne: R Tarrant (thumb). Greater Western Sydney: T Scully (illness, replaced in the selected side by Z Williams).
Reports: North Melbourne: A Swallow for tripping J Kelly in the third quarter.
UMPIRES Findlay, Rosebury, Mitchell.
CROWD 7824 at Spotless Stadium.
Greater Western Sydney showed there is life beyond their legion of injured stars, but all the fight they could muster was not enough to topple a hardened North Melbourne at Spotless Stadium, going down by 56 points.
The big challenge was for the Giants to prove themselves without key personnel Shane Mumford, Joel Patfull, Phil Davis and Stephen Coniglio, who they forfeited to injury in the loss last round to Collingwood. That challenge became bigger when Tom Scully went down ill during the week and replacement ruckman Andrew Phillips was withdrawn due to soreness.
It meant six changes, including debuts to Jack Steele and Caleb Marchbank, leaving the experience differential between the teams 82 games per player or, as Cameron pointed out afterwards, about five years’ experience.
