Young gun dazzles as college starts season with gritty victory

Port Fairy's Olly Myers, who is impressing at club level with his ability to find the football, was dynamic as Emmanuel College got its School Sport Victoria football season off on the right foot with a hard-fought 17-point win against Rowville College at Reid Oval.

The Warrnambool-based college was wayward, kicking 9.16 (70) to 8.5 (53), but managed to kick away after half-time.

Emmanuel College coach Chris McLaren said Myers was eye-catching.

"He was our captain today he just played like a leader all game, played big minutes on the ball and led from the front," he said.

"He was terrific. I look back at the last couple of years at guys like Harry Keast who graduated and how he really committed to his school footy.

"Olly kind of reminded me of Harry in that way and was just terrific for us."

McLaren said Koroit youngster Talor Byrnes was "very, very good on-ball" while Warrnambool's Ryan Barnes was another standout.

The college mentor also heaped the praise on another Warrnambool prospect in Sam Carter, who played a "foreign" role at half-back but provided a lot of drive and spark.

McLaren said the group rose to some early challenges against the highly-regarded Rowville team.

"I thought it was a good win, but we kicked an awful lot of points and the scores were level at half-time," he said.

"We managed to get a bit of a lead and didn't quite finish off our work and they were getting dangerous from stoppage.

"We had to change a few things after half-time to try and restrict them and we managed to turn it around to the boys' credit."

McLaren said it was always pleasing to see the college rise against the big Melbourne schools.

"In a lot of these schools the guys have scholarships, so you face certain challenges and they (Rowville) are really talented but the contribution of our players was great.

"To the players' credit they always get around each other and provide a lot of support to each other."