PORTLAND’S 2024 senior football season hasn’t gotten off to the start it was hoping for, as they were defeated by Port Fairy 17.13 (115) to 4.4 (28) in round one of the Hampden Football League on Saturday.

The Tigers started brightly, as Toby Jennings kicked the first goal of their season with a snap around his body from the pocket, before Tom Sharp kicked their second in short succession to have them leading by two goals early.

From there, both teams’ respective defences dominated the early stages of the game, with the Seagulls able to only score the one goal for the remainder of the first quarter, whilst the Tigers remained at just two goals come quarter-time.

However, Port Fairy was the side who broke the shackles, as they put Portland under immense pressure with repeated forward entries which yielded four second quarter goals while the Tigers failed to score.

The Tigers’ troubles were worsened by a knee injury to senior playing-coach Lochie Huppatz, as he went down early in the second term and took no further part in the match.

The Seagulls were able to cement their ascendancy in the third quarter, as while Charlie Piergrosse kicked the Tigers’ third goal of the game, Port Fairy were able to kick six for the quarter.

It was a similar story in the fourth quarter as once again the Seagulls kicked six goals to the Tigers’ one, with Jason Rowan finally able to get on top in his matchup with Paul Procter to finish with six of his own.

Huppatz said while it was a disappointing result for the group finish up 87 points in arrears, they had plenty of motivation to take away from the game.

“Of course it’s disappointing, you want to come away from your first game of the season with a win ideally, but realistically we also had some other things we wanted to take away from the game,” he said.

“We want to embrace mistakes and celebrate the small wins… hopefully soon enough we can turn those small wins into big wins.

“I think we played a really strong game for that first quarter and a bit, but we just weren’t able to maintain that for the rest of the game.

“I think that first quarter was great, and I think the boys were really trying to make sure (the gameplan) worked and the intensity was high.

“Once we hit that adversity we struggled a bit, and with a couple of players down it hurt us a bit… as a group I think we need to realise we have a lot of leaders out there who can have a voice other than myself.

“It’s hard to draw on positives when you get beaten convincingly, but that’s what I’m putting it on the group to try and do.”

Huppatz praised the work of his defensive unit as a whole which he said held up well for large portions of the game despite being under immense pressure.

“We chatted about that a bit… we’ve got a new defensive plan that we’re trying to implement, and if we do it right it’s going to be really hard to score against,” Huppatz said.

“And for large portions of the game that’s kind of how it played out, we weren’t playing great football, but our ‘lock’ kept holding on… eventually the dam walls broke which probably was a little bit effort-based but also me putting it on the boys to take risks, so I’ll take some onus on the blowout.”

In particular, Huppatz praised the efforts of club debutant Luke Evans and Procter for their work in the backline.

“I picked those two names out, but I think there were a bunch of others who it could have been as well, I think ‘Belly’ (Damien Bell) was really consistent today and you always know what you’re going to get from ‘Wils’ (Jake Wilson),” Huppatz said.

“But I think Procter probably had the hardest job in Hampden league footy playing on Jason Rowan when he had a bit of extra motivation in his 250th game, and I think (Procter) entirely won that job for a large portion of the game.

“‘Bommer’ (Evans) just gives us something different down there, that bit of skill by foot that we need in order to play like we want to play… he might still need some time to adjust to that speed difference between Hampden and South West footy, but you could tell as the game went on, he got a bit more used to it.

“Other than that, you know what you’re going to get from ‘Benny’ (Malcolm), I thought he won the ruck contest convincingly, and I’d say he’s a primary reason why our clearances were on top all day,” Huppatz said.

“Having (Jennings) there is amazing as well, he seems to stand up and produce quality football regardless of the scoreline.

“Other than that, I think the more games we can get out of (Dylan Barr) the better, he’s a tough body over the ball and he just adds something a bit different.”