The two Blues footballers caught up in the enhanced “palm slap’’ were Mark Watson and Zane Johnstone — the celebration, not that everyone would have realised, was in recognition of a combined 100-goal total between the pair.
Watson kicked one goal on Saturday (60 for the season) and Johnstone was credited with four (40) before leaving the ground late in the third quarter with a sore hamstring, taking the combined total of the pair to the triple figure tally for the season.
It was fitting that the milestone was reached in an important game for the unbeaten ladder leader, against second-ranked Moama.
The Blues were 78-point winners when the teams met in round six, Watson held to one goal and Johnstone bagging four majors.
On Saturday it was a 29-point victory for the Blues, who are well and truly on track for back-to-back titles — albeit three years apart after no finals in the 2020 and 2021 seasons.
Tongala’s unbeaten 15-week run in the 2022 season follows on from its 2021 win-loss record of 12-1 and its grand final win of 2019.
Johnstone was best on ground in that 2019 premiership victory, but Watson had played all his football that season with the senior team before injuring his knee and sitting out the finals.
The pair will never be regarded as twin towers, they don’t even qualify as “Collingwood six footers’’, but their combined output for Tongala’s reserve grade team has been compared with the best two-pronged attacks in the game.
In fact, Watson’s goal tally for the season compares favourably with any other player — senior level included — in the Murray league.
They are quite different figures to the likes of Harry McKay/Charlie Curnow, Tom Hawkins/Jeremy Cameron and Jack Reiwoldt/Tom Lynch — but in MFL reserve grade circles they are larger than life.
Tongala’s reserve grade team, despite regularly providing support to the seniors in the absence of Northern Territory-based players, has scored less than 80 points only once this season.
In eight of its matches this season the total has exceeded 120 points as Johnstone, Watson and — to a lesser extent — Sam Tyler (24 goals) have led the title defence.
Watson kicked 11 goals in the Blues’ 152-point win against Nathalia in round three this season and has a pair of seven-goal bags to his credit.
Johnstone’s best return was a half dozen against Finley in round seven when the Blues were 151-point winners.
Four times this season the pair have combined for double-figure goal returns and only once apiece have they been kept goalless.
Up until last year Watson had played mostly senior football, having made his debut with the club in 2009 while still in under-17 ranks.
Johnstone, after returning to the club from Girgarre in 2017, was also a regular senior player prior to joining forces with Watson out of the goalsquare in the reserve grade competition.
Watson has played 160 club games, all but 40 in the seniors.
He plays out of the goalsquare, while centre half forward Johnstone is further afield.
“He (Johnstone) plays pretty high, but we know what each other is doing. Of the goals we have kicked, probably half of them have come from one another,” Watson said.
“We definitely like playing with each other. When he missed a couple of games I had to get my own footy.”
Watson, a 30-year-old Yambuna dairy farmer and father-of-three, is three years younger than cabinet maker Johnstone.
A new arrival to the Watson household hasn’t slowed the goalkicking ace, six-week-old Rex the younger sibling of Oscar, 6, and two-year-old Macie.
Watson’s wife, Ash, is a decorated netballer, a league best and fairest winner, who has sat out the 2022 season with her pregnancy.
Watson and Johnstone are part of a reserve grade team which, on paper, is better than the premiership squad of 2019.
“We haven’t had our best team this year, due to COVID, injuries and players moving up to the senior team,” Watson said.
He said club coach Jordan Souter had ensured the senior and reserve grade personnel worked as a single unit.
"Of our best 21, probably 18 have played senior football. There isn’t a reserves and senior feel, everyone is treated the same, from the club’s best player to the 60th player on the list,“ he said.
Up until round eight of the season Watson’s goalkicking accuracy, from club statistics, was up around 90 per cent.
“It has dipped a bit, against Mulwala I kicked five or six points,” Watson said.
“Zane was the other way, he was off target early in the season and has turned it around.”
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