Bayswater stun the Eagles in upset of the round

By Ryan Long.

Undermanned, Bayswater prevailed this weekend to shake up the Division One ladder with a fantastic six-point win over premiership contender, Beaconsfield.

The Waters had won just one game from their first six matches of the 2025 season, travelling to Holm Park Reserve, a ground in which the Eagles had won all three of their encounters at in season 2025.

Without several of their key stars, a young side left Holm Park on Saturday with a memorable six-point win, defeating Beaconsfield 10.8 68 to 9.8 62.

Bayswater Senior Coach Luke Harris was thrilled with the effort and intensity his young group brought to the game.

“We got a pretty young group out there,” Harris said.

“They performed for four quarters and in the last quarter we’d had enough of performing well without winning.”

Against one of the leading sides in the division, Bayswater were able to shut down the run and ball movement of a very talented Beaconsfield side, particular their half backs.

“We put a bit of work into the way they played,”

“We tried to take away their their movement, their ball movement from half back and tried to ramp our pressure up, which the boys were pretty relentless on the day.”

Christian Poe was outstanding on the day for Bayswater, listed as one of the best players on the ground.

A rising star at Bayswater, he had the tough job of matching up against Beaconsfield’s Jake Aarts.

“He's a tough in and under player, but we're we're trying to work with him to get around the ground and find a bit more easy ball because he does all the hard things and he actually spread hard yesterday.

“He was going to Jake Arts a lot at stoppage, doing a bit of work on Jake when he was in there,”

“And then he actually spread from stoppage and won a bit of the ball and he hit the scoreboard, which is good for him to get a lick of the ice cream because he does all the hard work.”

The contest remained tight all afternoon, with Bayswater trailing by seven points at the final change.

Bayswater hit the lead at the 11-minute mark of the term through a Matthew Higgins goal. At the 16-minute mark of the quarter, the margin had got out to twelve points in favour of the visitors.

Beaconsfield’s Patrick Ward kept things interesting, bringing the margin back to an even sic-points with a few minutes left to play.

Harris was pleased with the way the side stood up defensively under great pressure in the final term.

“Late in the game, Jack Lewis, one of our defenders really stood up and the whole back line stood up as well,”

“They got a couple of entries so we're all sitting there getting very tense and look if we had lost the game, that wouldn't have changed the effort and energy that we brought and we still could have leveraged off that and it would have been a good day regardless of the win,”

"But to win and have reward for their effort, I think that'll be a real launching bad form for the rest of the season and beyond."

Considering the outs that Bayswater had, this goes down as one of the great upsets of the season.

Ben White, Bryce Galvin, Ben Searle, Joel Galvin, Chase Harris, Lachlan Kruger and Daniel Kitto all notable Bayswater names missing in Saturday’s 22 that ran out against the Eagles.

“We had a good crowd there yesterday and celebrated hard and they were pumped to see the win.”

“Had a few supporters tell me it's the best win they've seen, which that that was nice to hear.”

It’s Luke Harris’ first year as Senior Coach at Bayswater and thus far, it’s been a great fit for both him and the club as they look to build into the second half of the year.

"It's a fantastic footy club," Harris said.

“I've been around footy my whole life and yeah, there's a lot of good people of people at Bayswater and it's a great community.”

"I'm really, really lucky to be there and feel very proud to be part of their their football club."