The Northern Knights have continued on their winning ways with an emphatic 49 point victory over Queensland. In the last weekend of match-ups against the state sides, the Knights were up against the team widely regarded as the strongest representative team taking part in the three week interstate experiment.
The Knights set the tone early, using the breeze to their advantage by kicking ten goals to one in the first quarter. Interestingly, Queensland had most of the play for the first two minutes and in that time scored nearly their entire quarters total. After that, it was all Knights as Michael Hurley was proving to be more than a handful up forward for the Queensland defence, kicking four first quarter goals. Matt Kreuzer and Pat Veszpremi got amongst it with two goals apiece, while Trent Cotchin and Nyaburu Kelly kicked one each.
Queensland were very wasteful with their disposal, losing posession all over the ground and struggling with set shot attempts - with three shots in the first quarter, all within range, not making the distance. This saw the Knights hold a whopping 57 point lead at the first break.
The second quarter saw Queensland start playing themselves back into the game, now kicking with the advantage of the breeze. Their general play was much stronger, but their conversion around goal let them down scoring 3.8 for the quarter. The Knights fared no better than Queensland kicking into the wind, as they managed one goal for the quarter through Pece Micevski.
After half time Trent Cotchin came out playing like a man possessed. Coming off a strong first half Cotchin nailed an early goal and kicked another two behinds within the first few minutes. The Knights were on top in all areas of the ground, most notably with Luke Hobbs playing an important role in the back line creating plenty of good rebound, but also remaining tight on his immediate opponent. Nathan Thomas, in his first game back from a rib injury was lively at ground level and was leading the way in forward line pressure, an area of the game that the Knights were really benefiting from.
Veszpremi and Hurley both added to their goal tally for the day and while they were still holding a 48 point lead at the final change the Knights would've been disappointed to have kicked eight behinds in the third term.
With the game pretty well wrapped up many of the usual faces were prominent for the Knights to close the game out. Hurley and Veszpremi added their sixth and fourth goals respectively, while Micevski and Liam O'Donnell each scored a major. Yet again, conversion was an issue for the Knights with Cotchin ending up scoring an entire goals worth of behinds, in an otherwise magnificent game.
Adrian Totino played a key role all day by preventing highly touted Queensland on baller, Dayne Zorco (averaging 36 disposals in TAC Cup games this year prior to today) from having an influence. Knights coach, Paul Satterley was quick to praise Totino for his disciplined game. "He (Totino) wasn't so much playing a tagging role on Zorco, he was just paying him respect. It was a role he played very well today."
Satterley was pleased to get such a convincing win against highly rated opposition, "We'd built this game up all week. Queensland have been in good form, they've been winning a lot more ball than their opposition and have had a couple of easy wins, so it was good to get a start on them like that."
To have four tight games like we have and then come out with a performance like that is a real credit to the boys work rate. We've always known that we've had the talent there, but to see the work rate match that talent today was the biggest positive."
If anything, the scoreboard flattered them because of all our behinds (41 scoring shots to 26) but that's something for us to work on."
The Knights next game will be against the highly fancied Gippsland Power in Morwell on Saturday at 1pm.
Northern Knights 18.23.130 def. Queensland 11.15.81
Goals: Hurley 6, Veszpremi 4, Kreuzer, Cotchin, Micevski 2, N.Kelly, O'Donnell 1
Bests: Hurley, Kreuzer, Totino, Hobbs, Cotchin, Thomas
Last Modified on 30/03/2008 18:19