NELSON Bay Marlins AFL stalwart Adam Blyth has chalked up a significant playing milestone.<\/p>\n
The blue and gold\u2019s warrior celebrated his 250th appearance for the club during the Marlins\u2019 95-80 loss to the Killarney Vale Bombers in opening round action in the 2026 AFL Hunter Central Coast Black Diamond Senior Mens Cup competition.<\/p>\n
Despite the loss, evergreen Blyth was one of the best players on ground with a powerhouse display that inspired the Nelson Bay team to a handy 20 point lead at the half time break.<\/p>\n
The strong-finishing Bombers booted seven girls in the third term and another three in the final quarter to edge out the courageous Marlins line up.<\/p>\n
Nelson Bay brought strong energy and pressure early and kicked five goals in the opening quarter for a 32-19 advantage before establishing a 51-31 lead going into the main interval.<\/p>\n
But Killarney Vale responded with an early second half blitz \u2013\u00a0 posting 45 points and conceding only seven in a match-turning quarter.<\/p>\n
Despite a strong last quarter push from the Marlins, it wasn\u2019t quite enough to get over the line.<\/p>\n
On a special day for the Nelson Bay club, three other key players reached important milestones.<\/p>\n
Tim Anderson registered his 150th game for the Marlins while Jason Carey and Nikolas Ellis-Brody each racked up 50 matches with wholehearted performances.<\/p>\n
Other Nelson Bay players to impress were Zane Grant, Jayden Baldwin-Rymer, Hudson Roche, Wayd Blackburne (four goals) and super boot and team skipper Billy Barton (two goals).<\/p>\n
After a second round bye, the Marlins will host the Wyong-Lakes Magpies in a May 2 fixture at Dick Burwell Oval.<\/p>\n
By Chris KARAS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NELSON Bay Marlins AFL stalwart Adam Blyth has chalked up a significant playing milestone. The blue and gold\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-620275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}