Moama will head into the Christmas break with an unbeaten record after comfortably accounting for Nondies-Cohuna at Moama Recreation Reserve in round nine.
The Pies restricted Cohuna to 135 despite valuable contributions from imports Archie Sussex with 43 runs and Karim Marcelle with 32, owing to a late collapse of 7-35 after comfortably navigating to 3-100.
Five ducks through the Cohuna batting line-up proved the difference, with Jordan McGregor continuing his run of form with the ball with an economical 3-25 off his nine overs.
Rhys Drennan chipped in with 2-29, while Leigh Johnson posted a gallant 22 not out down the order for Nondies-Cohuna to put a respectable total on the board.
But it was not enough.
Anthony McMahon blasted past the 500-run mark for the season with 79 off 55 deliveries and Matt Saunders made 42, with the duo crafting a 126-run partnership for the second wicket after the early loss of Joel Murphy and Fraser Buchanan.
“To have 500 runs at Christmas is a massive effort,” Moama skipper Joel Murphy said of McMahon.
“He’s obviously been the key to the hot start to our season. He’s been making runs almost every week.
“We think we have a team that has enough depth to pick up the slack, but in the meantime, he’s firing every week.”
Moama passed Nondies-Cohuna two wickets down in the 21st over, putting an exclamation point on an excellent first half of the 2023-24 season.
“It was a bit of a stalemate and not much was happening, but we were able to get a few wickets in a row and restrict them to 130, which we thought was a really good effort,” Murphy said.
“We lost a couple of quick wickets at the top, but Tony (McMahon) and Matt (Saunders) did the job for us at three and four.
“It ended up being a pretty comprehensive win, which was a nice way to finish the year.”
The Pies are undefeated after nine games and in the box seat in the race for the McMahon Shield flag, a position Murphy was unsurprisingly surprised to be in.
But with clashes against top-four opponents Echuca South and Echuca in the first two rounds after Christmas, he knows there are still some hurdles to jump.
“(Having a record of) 9-0 is a nice spot to be,” he said.
“We probably didn’t expect it at the start of the year, but we’ve been playing some good cricket.
“We know there are more challenges to come. We haven’t played Echuca, who are second, and Echuca South, who are third.
“You can only beat who you can beat, and we’ve won all our games so far.”
Nondies-Cohuna, one of last season’s grand finalists, will hope to improve on its seventh-place finish to 2023 when it faces Cooma after the break.
The Game
Moama 2-139 (Anthony McMahon 79, Michael Hill 42) d Nondies-Cohuna 9-135 (Archie Sussex 43, Jordan McGregor 3-25)