The Grafton Tigers AFL side has continued their unbeaten run in the North Coast AFL competition with a solid win over the Nambucca Valley Lions at Macksville on Saturday.
A game billed as the match of the round saw the top two teams go head to head in their first encounter of the year, and both wanting to win to assert their strength as the competition front runners.
The match started with the Tigers dominating early possession from the midfield to open a 13 point lead before Nambucca could open their scoring, ruckman Graeme Connelly combining well with midfielders Ron Davis and Joel Sword to keep the ball inside the forward line and the pressure on the Lions, at the end of the first quarter, Grafton were leading by 30 points.
Nambucca regrouped in the second quarter to apply the pressure back onto the Tigers, keeping the ball inside Grafton’s defensive line, half-backs, Justin Darby, Ryan Sheather and Dion McGregor worked tirelessly to prevent the lions coming back into the game, only allowing a goal to Aaron Clarke and a behind to be added to the Nambucca total while Grafton were able to extend their lead with the forwards of Dan Zacek and Shawn Purton continually outplaying their opponents for contested marks and converting those into valuable goals for the Tigers to go to the half time break leading by 38 points.
The third quarter saw a strong tussle in the midfield with a lot of scrappy play and hard contested football, both teams defensive lines worked overtime to constantly return the ball back to the centre, resulting in only one goal to each team with 3 behinds allowing the Tigers to extend their lead to 41 at the final break.
With the game only for the Tigers to lose at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the game became a physical and spiteful contest, seeing three Lions sin binned for striking early in the quarter, this allowed for Grafton to open up the Lions defence resulting in the addition of 4 goals before the teams were even again, only a further melee ten minutes from full time resulting in the send off of a Grafton player for striking allowed Nambucca to use their advantage to add a late goal to their total.
Final score: Grafton Tigers - 12.18 (90) defeating Nambucca Valley Lions - 5.5 (35)
Goal scorers for Grafton were Dan Zacek with 4, Shawn Purton kicked 3, Dale Beaver with 2 and Luke Hayman, Sam Morrison and Josh Sheather with a goal each.
Best Players for the Tigers were Dan Zacek, Ron Davis, Justin Darby, Shawn Purton, Graeme Connelly with Joel Sword was named man of the match.
At the end of round 5, Grafton are the only undefeated side in the competition with a 2 win lead at the top of the North Coast AFL ladder, next week see’s the Tigers host the North Coffs Kangaroo’s at J J Lawrence Field.
Last Modified on 22/05/2011 16:08