A second three-goal flurry in as many matches set Workies on the path to a third straight victory on Sunday.
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After slotting three late goals to turn a one goal lead into a four goal win over Tudor Wests last week, Workies applied the heat early in their clash with Souths United to jump out to a 3-nil lead midway through the first half.
That ultimately proved the difference as they prevailed 5-3 to inflict on Souths their first loss of the season.
“We weren’t great but we were good,” Workies coach Andrew Farmilo said.
“Our work up until the attacking 25 was good.
“Our overlapping was really good from the back.”
But, after that initial burst, once they got it up there they took some poor options.
“We probably thought we could afford to go too direct and we lost our shape,” Farmilo said.
Souths subsequently fought back to 3-1 at half-time and then 3-2, but Workies replied pretty quickly and got back out to 5-2 before Souths coach Sam Clifton slammed a penalty corner with a-minute-a-half remaining.
Calvin Farmilo led the scoring charge for Workies with a double, Ehren Hazell, Jack Cruickshank and Isaac Farmilo also finding the back of the net.
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They were predominantly field goals, which was pleasing for Farmilo.
He was also pleased with their defensive effort particularly in the first half.
“We barely made a mistake in the first half with our tackling,” he said.
Hazell was a big part of that and one of their best.
“Ehren, Calvin and Tim McKenzie were excellent today,” Farmilo said.
“Those three the last two weeks have been great.”
After praising how clinical they were last week, Clifton said the basics let his side down in the second half.
That led to them turning over too much ball.
It was their first real blemish this season and Clifton wasn’t too disheartened.
“We had enough chances to score seven or eight goals,” he said, adding that two of Workies first half goals were “our fault”.
Clifton attributed Souths’ inability to convert their chances to a combination of a few things. One of those was they “didn’t control the ball in the circle”.
In the earlier game Tudor Wests dispatched of an understrength Kiwis 8-nil.
“We had to rebuild after losing last week,” captain Brett Lobsey said.
“We had to get some confidence in our team play.”
Guilty of not playing their style of hockey against Workies, they got back to it on Sunday.
“We held the ball fairly well and our two strikers – Sam Wright and Noah Pitt – cleaned them up,” he said.
Wright jagged a hat-trick and Pitt a double.
And while it was nice to keep a clean sheet, Lobsey acknowledged that Kiwis didn’t really fire a lot at them.
They had a number of younger players stepping up and were without the likes of injured captain Josh Worpel, Alex Taggart, Nathan Czinner and Mitch Burrows.
Worpel thought that inexperience did hurt them particularly in defence.
That defensive awareness wasn’t quite there.
“We weren’t making the right decisions in defence,” he said.
RESULTS
Workies 5 (Calvin Farmilo 2, Ehren Hazell, Jack Cruickshank, Isaac Farmilo gls) d South United 3 (Sam Clifton, Brock Mackay, Adam Straub gls)
Tudor Wests 8 (Sam Wright 3, Noah Pitt 2, James Haling, Lachlan Skinner, Richard Lord gls) d Kiwis 0.
