WARATAHS produced a late flurry to power away to a five-goal win over Flames in their Tamworth women’s first grade clash on Sunday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
They scored three goals in about the last six minutes to turn a 1-nil half-time lead into a 6-1 win.
Pip Ash led the scoring effort with four, with Anita Collins and Abigail Doolan adding the extras.
It was a bit of a “Jekyll and Hyde” performance.
“We had patches of really good play and patches of very ordinary play,” coach Greg Doolan said.
“Our first goal came from some lovely play.
“But then we were under the pump and did some silly stuff.”
The result was they led only 1-nil at half-time and were possibly lucky to be that.
They had to make a couple of saves on the line.
He said there were passages they can go forward with but the differences between the good and bad periods is too great for his liking.
It was a bit closer in the second half.
“The second half we didn’t play as well as we did in the first half but our mistakes weren’t as bad,” he said.
They were able to sustain a bit of pressure and create some opportunities, although it wasn’t really until Flames scored to equalise in the second half that they really started to up the tempo.
Doolan said Collins was good for them as were Brittany King and Mel Courtney.
Flames coach Barrie Pritchard thought they had a pretty good first half.
“We defended quite well and created a few opportunities that we weren’t good enough to take at that time,” he said.
But after drawing level, things started to go downhill.
“The collective defence we were doing in the first half wasn’t happening,” he said.
He thought fatigue was a factor.
“We just ran out of legs,” he said.
That was shown by those late Waratahs goals.
And while they did concede six goals, he said defence isn’t their issue. It’s creating goals and then converting those opportunities that’s the problem.
“We’re just not holding the ball when we go into attack,” he said.
“And when we go into attack, we’re not creating enough opportunities.”
Kate Ferguson was excellent again and by far their best player.
Pritchard said Tegan Smith also played well in the midfield along with Bec Honeyfield and Bek May at right and left half.
