Thunder look to continue momentum built before breakThursday, June 5, 2014 - 2:53 PM - by Chris Pike

PEEL Thunder had been close to a win all season and never more so than in its loss to West Perth prior to its eventual win over South Fremantle, but now the Mandurah-based club has had three weeks to gear up for a strong second half of the season.

Peel had been competitive in losses to East Perth, Swan Districts, East Fremantle, Claremont, Subiaco and Perth, but it was the defeat to West Perth at Arena Joondalup in Round 8 that left the Thunder at make or break point.

Peel outplayed the reigning WAFL premiers all day long just about before losing on the last kick of the day from Anthony Tsalikis.

The way the Thunder responded to that heartbreak was what coach Cam Shepherd was focused on and he couldn’t have been more delighted with Peel putting in its best performance in almost a year to break an 18-game winning streak with a commanding 24-point win over South Fremantle at Bendigo Bank Stadium.

Without question, Peel was building its best form of the season at that point but now with the State game break and then the Round 10 bye, the Thunder will not have played for three weeks when they head to East Fremantle Oval to face the Sharks this Saturday.

Shepherd, though, was proud of his players for backing up from having win snatched away against West Perth to come out and play such a strong four-quarter game to beat South Fremantle.

"There's no doubt that when you put all those emotional things into it that it has an impact but we think that we are on the right path, and that we have been on the right path all year. Everyone likes to see a side win and to have done that is just reward for the players who were stung pretty badly by that loss," Shepherd said.

"I reckon it showed a bit of resilience from the group who are now starting to gel well together. We were wary of the fact that sides can perform really well or poorly so we just wanted our effort to be really strong. We asked the players to respond and they did. They were really hurt after last week's game and I'm proud of the way that to a man they responded.

"The feeling in our camp during the week was that we knew we had been building, we knew we had been involved in every game and hadn’t gone away so it was just a matter of continuing to work really hard. Friedrich Nietzsche said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I told the players that message and we wanted to come out of it stronger, and I think they did that."

Peel was also down a man early on in the game when Fremantle's Clancee Pearce injured a shoulder and every member of the Thunder team made a strong contribution.

Whether it was Brady Grey or Sam Menegola doing well in stopping roles on Ashton Hams and Haiden Schloithe; Brendon Jones, Hayden Crozier and Jacob Ballard winning plenty of the ball; Matt Brown, Colin Sylvia and Michael Apeness kicking goals or James Flaherty, Kepler Bradley and Eddie Dann doing well down back, it was a strong all-round showing by Peel.

"We didn’t have a rotation in the back six for the last three quarters and Clancee had a really good first quarter so we were really pleased with the fact that there were no excuses made," he said.

"It was all about getting on with the job and they all put their head over the ball, ran with a player if they had to and did all the small things that add up to a win."

There might be plenty of talk about Fremantle's partnership with Peel, but the fact is that the Thunder team continues to be tremendously young.

From the team that beat South Fremantle, Peel had an average age over its 22 players of 23 and of 34 WAFL games. That includes 28-year-olds Brendon Jones, Colin Sylvia, Kepler Bradley and Jonathon Griffin.

At the other end, three teenagers played for the Thunder and nine of the 22 were 21 and under.

As for the average of 34 WAFL games that is greatly enhanced by the 186 played by Jones and 109 by Brown.

As for the help of AFL players, Peel did have 593 games of experience at the top level in its line-up, but 157 of those came from Sylvia, 117 from Bradley, 74 from Pearce and 68 from Griffin. No other Peel player had more than 32 games of AFL experience.

"We played with eight or nine teenagers this week and other sides spruik about being young, but we are the youngest by some way. We think that's exciting for our club and we look forward to them developing and us becoming stronger," Shepherd said.

"With maturity and as they play more together we knew we were always building. We are now looking forward to a couple of weeks off and then continuing to play and improve. What we really have to concentrate on is improving individually and as a team without worrying about anything else."

Shepherd and everyone at Peel is now hoping that after having a three week break they have freshened up and can now build on the momentum started before that time off.

"We are looking forward to the second half of the year. We take each game as it comes and we are building. The synergy of the group is certainly building and we look forward to every challenge as it comes," Shepherd said.

"We are just so pleased with performances like Brady Grey on Hams and Menegola on Schloithe, our rucks continue to dominate and we think we've got an honest back-line and a tall and hard to match up on forward-line."