SWFL grand final: Carey Park colts coach Frank Italiano’s forward thinking leads to win against Busselton

Sunday’s colts final between Carey Park and Busselton was framed as the battle of the competition’s two best and most imposing forwards. Busselton’s Ben Taylor, the league’s leading goal-kicker, and Carey Park’s Brady Lenaghan, his nearest rival, both had opportunities to decide the game off their own boots. But in the end it was a narrow-focused piece of tactical genius from Panthers coach Frank Italiano — who didn’t get sucked into the hype of the two forwards’ duel — that had the biggest impact on their way to a breakthrough premiership. “Brady’s game plan wasn’t to kick goals,” the premiership coach said. “It was to take Ky (opposition defender Ky Spowart) out of the game, because I think he sets Busso up from the half-back line. “Every game of theirs I have watched, he sets them up and runs their back-line. “Brady’s job was just to engage him, not let him run off and to pop up and kick four goals and two critical ones late was phenomenal.” It wasn’t the first time the move had been used either, with the same tactic deployed when the two sides met just a fortnight prior. “Last time we played them we beat them out at Harvey-Brunswick and Brady didn’t get a goal but we were still happy with him, because that was always the plan,” Italiano said. Lenaghan’s two final quarter goals, including a smart bit of work which proved to be the game’s decisive moment, shot the key forward into Lynn Medal calculations. At just 17 years old and standing at 184cm, Lenaghan already has eight league games to his name, a feature of his club’s tendency to promote youth in recent years.