GUNNEDAH United overcame Namoi United in the second half at Wee Waa on Saturday to stretch their NIF McDonald’s Premier League run to three wins from three games.
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The home side led 1-nil at half time courtesy of Dave Every but Gunnedah replied threefold to take the points 3-1 and keep hold of top spot in the Southern Conference.
It was tough going, Gunnedah coach Richard Grant said.
He tipped that Namoi would be tough to beat at home and was impressed with how they did play.
“They took it right to us,” he said.
Down at the break, they changed things around structurally in the second half.
“We took one out of the back and put them in the midfield,” Grant said.
“We crammed the midfield.”
“We thought we’d take the puntand ask them questions.”
It paid off.
“They just didn’t have the room to move,” he said.
From that they started to get on top and dominated the last half hour, Grant thought.
He said it’s been a long time since they’ve been three from three at the start of the season and felt their two previous wins played a big part in getting them over the line.
“If we hadn’t won the first two we wouldn’t have had the desire and confidence to back ourselves back into the game,” he said.
He said it was probably one of their best allround team performances but couldn’t go past the back three of Andrew Mitchell, Josh Jolliffe and Jake Manley.
Cheetham and Nathan McDonald, starting his first game of first grade, also had strong games.
Namoi coach Danny Laws felt their urgency dropped off in the second half.
“We just didn’t want to win the ball in the 50-50 challenges,” he said.
“They pressed a bit harder.”
That led to turnovers.
“We turned the ball over three times cheaply and that was the difference in the end,” he said.
One of the things he liked in the first half was the way they moved the ball.
“We played the ball to the man and they were on the backfoot,” he said.
“We had lots of possession.”
They created a lot of chances from that but didn’t take them.
“We tried a whole new formation today and that worked really well,” he said.
As Gunnedah did in the second half they stacked the midfield, playing five in the middle line, but they just ran out of legs.
Laws said Luke Stawski was good in the midfield.
Young Bailey Campbell and Hamish McTaggart at centre back also had strong games.
