Reigning premier Katandra has found some Haisman Shield momentum with one weekend left before finals.
After losing the toss and being asked to bowl the Eagles restricted an in-form Nagambie to 124 after 49.2 overs in the Cricket Shepparton contest.
Katandra had an even spread of contributors from its bowling line-up, with only one bowler having an economy rate higher than 2.8 an over.
That was co-captain Jedd Wright, who still only went at 3.11 an over while also claiming 4-26.
“I’m starting to find a bit of bowling form, I suppose,” Wright said.
“It has been a bit of an injury-interrupted year for me, so it was good to get a few wickets, but what certainly helped was Andrew Riordan bowling really tight at the other end as well.
“I think it was a pretty good team effort. I think our quicks did a really good job of keeping it really tight at the top and everyone pretty much played their role.
“It would be one of our better bowling performances for this year.”
All-rounder Andrew Riordan has been arguably Katandra’s best player this season, taking nine wickets (best figures of 5-32) and averaging 34 with the bat (top score of 104).
The Eagles came into round 13 after two losses, although, understandably to two of the league’s best teams in Waaia and Numurkah.
Still, the club can take confidence from its impressive bowling display against quality opposition in Nagambie (third on the ladder).
When asked if the Eagles would be pushing for an outright victory on Saturday, the response from Wright was a hard no.
Instead, the captain emphasised the side’s plans to use the rest of the match to hopefully secure finals while ironing out some of the kinks in its game.
“No thought at all (of an outright victory),” he said.
“Even if the opportunity came up, I think for our team, our goal is to just bat the 80 overs next week.
“(We’ll) really try to spend some valuable time in the middle where we can just work on a few things that have been letting us down this year.
“We know the job is far from done, but the key is for us to play a full match. I think we lost to Kyabram by 10 runs and Numurkah similar.
“We are losing to good teams by 10 runs and all that means is we are not quite on and to beat the good teams, you have got to be playing the full allotted overs. That’s our goal for this week.”
The Eagles now only require 75 runs for victory after the home side made it to 0-50 at the end of the day’s play thanks to openers Ben Pedretti (21* runs from 70 balls) and Ben Clurey (26* from 93).
If the Eagles continue on and secure victory against the Lakers this Saturday, they will come up against one of Numurkah, Central Park-St Brendan’s or Nagambie in the first week of finals.