SANFL 2016: Eagles show Bloods no mercy in 76-point thrashing

HERE’S how well Woodville-West Torrens is going. A demolition of West Adelaide Saturday that stretched to 76 points by the final bell wasn’t enough.

West Adelaide’s O'Brien doesn’t get a second as he’s tackled by Eagle Von Bertouch. Picture: Dean Martin.

HERE’S how well Woodville-West Torrens is going. A demolition of West Adelaide Saturday that stretched to 76 points by the final bell wasn’t enough.

High standards, right?

“Yeah, but we got a bit lazy to be honest,” Eagles coach Michael Godden said.

“It’s not an arrogant thing but, internally, the targets we set for ourselves we didn’t really achieve today.

“The players themselves are really hot on making sure we adhere to those standards because we failed on the last step last year by going away from what we’d done all year. That keeps us grumpy.”

The Eagles strengthened their hold on second spot by extending their winning run to eight games with a commanding victory over the Bloods at Woodville.

The performance boasted 11 individual goalkickers, headed by key forward Michael Wundke’s five and four to Jack Gaffney.

It also halted West Adelaide’s resurrection at back-to-back wins. In a blow to the Bloods, their fifth defeat by 70 points or more also became their heaviest loss of the season.

Despite a narrow advantage at the clearances (35-32), a high-class Woodville-West Torrens smoked the Bloods with the ball in their hands.

Led by Matt Goldsworthy, Angus Poole, Scott Lewis and Chris Hall, the Eagles topped 400 disposals for the game, and punished the Bloods with a flood of inside-50s (56-20).

West lost Aaron Fielke minutes before the opening bounce when the Bloods’ three-goal hero from a week earlier tweaked a lower leg muscle during the warm-up.

Westies kicked the first goal of the match through Kaine Stevens in just the second minute, but that’s where the joy ended for the Bloods.

Woodville-West Torrens registered the next 14 inside-50s to quarter-time and capitalised with four unanswered goals and two more attempts that hit the post.

West’s cause was not helped when key backman Adam Hartlett went down with a calf injury during the second term. Tyson Slattery joined him before halftime and the visitors were down to one on the bench.

A consolation for the Bloods was their accuracy — they were 7.0 to early in the final term — but with too few chances to score against a quality opponent they were just never in the contest.

“We were outworked, out-skilled, outplayed — and comprehensively beaten on the day,” Bloods coach Mark Mickan said.

“Against a quality side like the Eagles we couldn’t afford to give them the look at the ball we did, and we paid for it.”