TOOLEYBUC Manangatang has jumped into top spot in the Central Murray Football Netball League A Grade ladder following another percentage-bolstering win.
The Saints were too strong for Nyah Nyah West, winning 60 to 33.
Outscoring Nyah Nyah West in every quarter, the Saints’ goals were shared around by goalers Melanie Waite and Zoe Fuller, who finished with 30 and 29 goals respectively.
Tooleybuc Manangatang coach Mel Henson said the pair — who have helped the Saints score the most goals in the competition thus far — have begun to gel well together.
“They’re starting to combine quite well together and become accurate. Zoe actually got injured on Saturday, so I’m not sure what her prognosis is,” Henson said,
Zoe O’Sullivan was also strong in mid-court and wing attack, playing a consistent game and doing “all the right things”, according to Henson.
Despite the easy win, Henson said the Demons were still tough competition.
“They played well and they’ve got a strong defence and strong goalers. We have some things to work on but it was a good game,” she said.
Demons coach Carly-Marie Clark said she was disappointed her team let the Saints get away from them in the second term.
“Our second quarter let us down, we weren’t really effective in getting the ball to our goalers,” Clark said.
“But with a few changes in the third quarter it showed that we’re very capable of keeping up with them — we were only one goal down in the third quarter.”
Sitting on two wins and three losses after Round 5, Clark said the team was hoping to gain some consistency when some injuries in the team started to clear up.
“We’ve sort of had some injuries and illnesses so we haven’t been able to have the same team two rounds in a row, so hopefully in a couple of rounds we’ll get to have that consistency that we’re after,” she said.
Denise Snyder was the best performer for the Demons on the day, scoring 24 of her side’s 33 goals.
The Saints’ win sees them leapfrog Swan Hill into first place, after catching up on the game the Swans had in hand prior to their bye at the weekend.
The two sides are undefeated four games into the season, and meet each other next week in a clash which might set the pace for the rest of the year.
Percentage is the only thing that separates the top two sides, and the Saints kept theirs comfortably above the 200 mark by almost doubling the Demons’ score.
Henson said she was looking forward to next week’s challenge.
“That’ll be a big test to see where we’re at. Obviously [Swan Hill] are last year’s grand finalists and we always have a good match-up against them,” she said.
