Woodville-West Torrens shocks Norwood — and most others — with crushing win

SERIOUSLY, no one could have could seen this result coming. Even Eagles coach Michael Godden could not have expected the whipping his team gave Norwood on Sunday.

SERIOUSLY, no one could have could seen this result coming.

Woodville-West Torrens coach Michael Godden is one of the few who gave his team a chance of downing Norwood — but even he admits not to this extent.

Norwood, SANFL champions for the past three years, were made to look third rate when smashed apart by Woodville-West Torrens in Woodville.

The final score was 17.11 (113) to 3.14 (32). Yes, you read that correctly.

The Eagles do have a handy record against the Redlegs.

But to conquer the premiers by 81 points, their biggest winning margin over the Redlegs, after coming off an opening-round loss to West Adelaide was a head shaker.

Adopting a new game plan this season after the disappointments of 2014, the hungry and desperate Eagles beat the Redlegs at their own game.

They'd get numbers back in defence and take advantage of opposition mistakes — and there were plenty — to punish the Redlegs on the counter attack.

"I knew through the pre-season what these guys were capable of, probably not to that extent,'' Godden said. "We played pretty much the complete game of footy.

"To see the how we performed last week, from the outside it would look like a massive improvement. But this week we executed what we planned to do and the players should be really proud.''

The first quarter reflected the story of the contest.

Despite kicking against a strong wind, the Eagles were in control from the outset on the back of relentless tackling pressure and composed ball movement.

The home side put the Redlegs under enormous pressure and fed off opponent's shoddy skills to rush forward in numbers.

Down back it was Luke Thompson marshalling the troops, while Tom Schwarz, James Boyd, Luke Jarad and Sam Martyn continually gained possession.

Small forward Lachlan McGregor was often isolated deep in attack in a successful ploy.

It took the Redlegs 27 minutes into the third quarter to register a goal, evidence of their lack of potency and inability to get the usual authority in their ball movement.

"Credit to them, they put a lot of pressure on us,'' Redlegs coach Ben Warren said.

"We were as fumbly as I have seen, we missed tackles and the ball movement was slow — they forced us into that.

"It was uncharacteristic from our men and I did not think we came to play.''