Against the Cats at Werriman Oval on Saturday, the Nomads had a comfortable, if not entirely convincing win beating the Muswellbrook side by 33 points. It was a solid effort, but the teamwork evident in recent weeks was lacking. Upfront Dave ‘Modra’ Richards and Weston Whitby kicked another 11 goals between them and the back line once again held the team together.

The game started in manic fashion with the two teams going goal for goal. However by the end of the quarter the Nomads were three goals up after good movement in the forward line and good delivery from the midfield. The second saw the wheels fall off somewhat with crowding in the forward 50, pot-shots from logically impossible angles and poor delivery right across the ground. Luckily the half time break seemed to calm things down and a seven goal third quarter put the Nomads well in front. The final quarter saw the Cats outscore the Nomads, but they never really looked like pegging back the margin.

Calla Teseling had a blinder in the middle (a well-deserved winner of the Players’ Player award), with his tackling being a standout feature of his game. Omphile Temoso, who just keeps improving, won the rucks all day providing plenty of opportunities for the midfielders. Modra and Weston combined well to keep the scoreboard ticking over (by my calculation they have now kicked 77 goals between them for the year). One memorable moment in the final quarter saw Weston tap the Sherrin out of a marking contest to Modra who was five metres away in space and who subsequently goaled. Johnathon Frost was his usual energetic self in the middled and Mitch ‘Muzza’ Reece and Rowdy Ballagh managed to repel the Cats attacks with almost monotonous regularity. The backline in general was very solid. The spoiling, especially by Marc Dowdle, was excellent: the cats had to work hard for any marks they did take in their half of the ground,

All of that said, there is room for improvement. More teamwork is required in the forward line and that will need to be rectified over the next few weeks. There was also a lot of uncharacteristic fumbling and the team really didn’t take advantage of situations where we had the weight of numbers on the flanks. We have some big games coming up in the next few week so the team needs to get to training and work on some of these things.

Nonetheless it was a reasonable outcome. It is always difficult to win at Muswellbrook so the four points are welcome relief and there are plenty of good signs with the continuing improvement of some of the newer players.

Round 10 2011

Cats def. by Nomads
	G	B	P		G	B	P
Q1	3	1	19		6	1	37
HT	6	2	38		8	7	55
Q3	8	3	51		13	9	87
FT	11	7	73		16	10	106

This entry was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2011 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Match report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.