Tudor Wests saved a penalty corner after the bell to hold on for a scrappy 3-2 win over Workies, while South United slotted five unanswered second half goals to account for Kiwis 8-1 in contrasting first grade clashes on Sunday.
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Souths’ seven-goal win pushed them two wins clear again at the top and was a good team performance, coach Sam Clifton said.
They led 3-1 at half-time but were “probably a bit lazy” in the first 20 minutes.
“We were missing a few of our defensive guys,” he said.
“It took us a little bit to adjust to not having those guys talking at the back.”
“Once we clicked into gear we passed the ball around well. We scored a lot of tap in goals and team goals.”
Their third win in a row, Clifton said their basics were a lot better than they have been, and noted that in the second half they tackled back well in pairs in defence.
It was the ball movement though that he was the most impressed with.
”We were keeping it short. We tried not to pass anything over 20m,” he said.
“The second half we did a lot of short passing.”
He said keeper Steve Kelly made some really good saves including a couple of drag-flicks off short corners.
Jamie O’Connor was also strong at the back.
Without Jeremy Blakely he had to step up in defence and “tackled really well”.
Kiwis coach Josh Worpel said they were their own worst enemies.
“At half-time we still in the game and probably for the first five-10 minutes after. We created a fair few chances but then we fell away from what we were doing.
“Traps weren’t sticking, passes weren’t sticking and we carried the ball too far. Souths’ is midfield too strong for that and turned us over and hurt us on the counter.”
It was disappointing after the way they had played the last two games.
Tudors captain Brett Lobsey was similarly disappointed with his sides display.
“I think we were dogged enough just to sneak it.”
“We didn’t show any of our potential,” he said.
Happy to get the points, he said they have got lots of areas to improve.
“It was pretty scrappy,” Lobsey said.
“We missed chances, passed the ball over the sideline.”
They scored the only goal of the second half with scores 2-all at half-time.
He said Jake Sheppeard was good at left half, and also made mention of Will Finch, who had only returned from overseas the night before.
Workies coach Andrew Farmilo said his sides execution just wasn’t quite there.
”The effort was there and we tried to play to the game plan but our passes didn’t stick. It was always a metre off where it should have been,” he said.
Toby Climpson was their best playing up front.
