WESTLOCK – The Westlock Thunderbirds’ hopes for a playoff date came to an end following a 48-27 loss to Drayton Valley’s Frank Maddock Warriors in their final Alberta 6-A-Side Football League home game played Oct. 21 at Westlock Elementary School.
The defeat is a tough pill for the club coming on their heels of their first victory of the year, a 62-27 Oct. 14 road win over Slave Lake’s Roland Michener Rams.
“We came out a tad flat today and it cost us a bit,” said head coach Travis Darling, noting injuries knocked out two of their better players. “But we fired right back. We did whatever we wanted to the last 10 minutes of this game and got the ball in and were on offence for almost the entire quarter — all things being equal, that wouldn’t have been the expectation six weeks ago.”
Darling said the win over Slave Lake gave his team a much-needed confidence boost and kept their slim playoff hopes alive. The club will now travel to Edson Oct. 28 for their final game of the season, a campaign that will see them finish in seventh out of eight teams in the division.
“The Slave Lake win was just full execution of them doing their job and putting the hammer down,” said Darling. “We knew we matched up well, but they still had to do their job.”
Playing in the Alberta 6-A-Side Football League for the first time has been a bit of a learning curve for the club as they faced some tough competition in the first half of the year and will end the season on the road in much the same manner.
But despite some tough losses this season, Darling has “no complaints” and is proud of his team, pointing out that in the spring they had anticipated playing nine-man football and ended up dropping down.
“The future is bright. We’re only graduating a handful of kids this year as a lot of our kids are Grade 10s and they’re putting in a lot of effort and commitment,” said Darling.
