By Trevor Jackson
Hatherleigh 17.18 (120) d Tantanoola 5.3 (33)
The Hatherleigh juggernaut continued on Saturday, as the Eagles easily accounted for Tantanoola in Round 4 of Mid South East football.
On their home deck the Eagles were simply untouchable, with a steady nine-point first-quarter lead to set the scene.
It was the second term which broke the game open, with a five goal quarter, while holding the Tigers to just two.
That equated to a 31-point half-time advantage and the Eagles did not back off from there.
Another three majors were added in the third quarter but it was the final stanza where Hatherleigh broke loose.
With the game in hand it would have been easy to sit back and allow the game to run its course.
However, the Eagles had different ideas, as the banged on seven major scores to run the game out in style.
Coach Jake Dowdy led by example, with seven goals to his name, while Jack Skeer (3) and Jordan Galpin (2) were other multiple contributors.
Dowdy it was a good win after some tough going early on.
“It was pretty windy and they took it up to us for the first half,” he said.
“It was a bit of a slug but we got the job done.”
The Eagles were without star forward Jake Wight, who suffered a broken wrist against Robe last round, while a couple of other niggling injuries forced the Eagles to refocus at the attacking end of the ground.
However, it did not seem to matter as Hatherleigh again had plenty of players stand up.
“I think we share the ball around and have a lot of goal scoring options,” Dowdy said.
“We have worked had on trying to get clean entries into the 50 which is working quite well so far.”
Despite holding a comfortable lead up to the long break, Dowdy said the contest was a lot closer on the ground than the scoreboard suggested.
“They were really taking it up to us, were hard at it with a lot of pressure,” he said.
“Early on our skills weren’t up to it but we worked on it after half time and the last half opened up for us.”
That was certainly the case as the Eagles limited the Tigers to just 13 points after the main break and banged on 69 points in total.
Despite having the game in hand at the final break, in the last quarter the Eagles kicked seven majors to ice the game.
“We wanted to make sure we ran it out and it was probably our best quarter,” Dowdy said.
Hatherleigh now has a week off with the bye, a timely break to ensure all players return fit and ready to go for Round 6 against Glencoe.
