Murray Bushrangers made a NAB League statement at the weekend, dominating Northern Territory Thunder with a 21.21 (147) to 4.7 (31) victory at Highgate Recreation Reserve.
Too good around the contest, the Bushies were on-song from start to finish, piling on six unanswered goals in the first quarter, before adding eight in the third to give their percentage a healthy boost.
While the squad was all smiles after the 116-point demolition, coach Mark Brown said he would not be looking too deeply into the final result.
“Traditionally NAB League games are really tough, hard-fought matches where the teams are pretty evenly matched, but that wasn’t the case on the weekend and there are a lot of reasons for that,” Brown said.
“A lot of their team would have met for the first time game day and probably didn’t have a lot of real training sessions together, so it was really difficult on their end.
“As a result, the game was on our terms for 95 per cent of it, so what you take from the game is the confidence individuals take from performing well and there was some really good passages of play.
“But overall we won’t look at that game too closely, to be honest. We just take the good win and move on pretty quickly.”
For the coaching staff, the main positive from the match was how the forward line functioned, with the likes of Fletcher Hart (six goals), Brayden George (three goals) and Toby Murray (three goals) all managing to have an impact.
“I think we connected to our forward half a lot better than we had in previous weeks,” Brown said.
“One really pleasing aspect of the game was that our talls started to mark the footy. We have got a really tall side this year and those key position players always take longer to develop, so to see them have a consistent impact, that will hold us in really good stead.
“Hopefully they can take a lot of confidence out of the win and keep playing good footy.”
Following on from a dominant performance last week, Seymour product Nick Quigg impressed once again, while a host of other players also put their names up in lights.
“Nick Quigg was really good again. He has been immense as that inside midfielder and was everywhere on the weekend, picking up 22 touches,” Brown said.
“Zander Nash from Jerilderie was impressive. After playing back for most of the season, we threw him forward late and he did some nice things.
“Kydan Atkinson came in last week and was good this week playing as that forward midfielder, while Joeve Cooper showed some great promise. He had some really impressive touches and ended up with 20 touches and a goal.”