HAMILTON Kangaroos was plagued with poor kicking for goal on Saturday, suffering a loss to Terang-Mortlake in Mortlake that snuffed out any chance of the Kangaroos playing Hampden Football Netball League finals.

The visitors played catch-up football for the second half, as the poor goal kicking that has plagued the team at different times during the season came calling again, as the Kangaroos posted 17 behinds for the game.

At the long break, the visitors had kicked 2.11 to trail by 10 points, but if the team had kicked truly then the game would have been won by half time.

When play resumed for the third quarter, the Kangaroos were determined to right their wrongs and they proceeded to win the final two terms, but still managed to kick more behinds than goals.

They posted 5.6 in the second half to bolster their score, but it still wasn’t enough to reel in the Bloods.

When the final siren sounded, the scoreboard read 7.17 (59) to 10.6 (66), which was a pointer to how the Kangaroos dominated the game but failed to capitalise on the scoring opportunities to claim victory.

Once again Brady Hicks led from the front as all good skippers do, named best on ground for the visitors with Rory Gill, Andrew Pepper, Lachie Urquhart, Taine Morris and Hamish Cook all playing well.

Urquhart continued the trend of coach, Hamish Waldron, blooding youngsters, as he made his senior debut and the youngster won plenty of the ball and will be a player who will carry the team forward in the years to come.

The Kangaroos now sit in seventh spot on the ladder and the narrow losses to Warrnambool, Portland and now Terang-Mortlake have really hurt the team’s quest to play finals.