In-form Woodville-West Torrens crushes Norwood in SANFL

Woodville-West Torrens has been building steam in recent weeks and it took its game to another level at The Parade on Saturday.

Woodville-West Torrens had sent out a few messages to rivals with four successive victories to be pushing for a spot in the top five on the ladder.

That warning became loud and clear at The Parade on Saturday when the Eagles upped the ante a few notched with a powerful 54-point thumping of Norwood.

The Redlegs are missing key players, but there were some big names out of the Eagles line-up and the manner in which they went about their business was an emphatic statement on the title race.

The defensive actions and tackling pressure of the Eagles were simply outstanding, as were their skills and the conviction in their ball movement.

Early in the final quarter, the Eagles had led by 75 points when the Redlegs were a shambles and coughing up a performance so foreign to the club for many years.

Redlegs coach Jarrod Cotton described it as an dishonourable loss.

It was a contrast in the Eagles rooms where Eagles coach Sam Lonergan was obviously complimentary of how his players attacked the game to claim their second win over the Redlegs in five games.

“The previous four weeks had been fantastic,” Lonergan said. “Today we overcame another one of these hurdles.

“To be able to do it a second time against a top three side (Redlegs) and do it in that way, I’m proud of them.”

The Eagles’ intent was glaringly obvious from the outset with a tremendous hunger for the contest, only to fail to capitalise on territorial advantage.

And the Redlegs punished them to grab an 11-point lead.

But the response from the Eagles was immediate, building a 28-point buffer on the back of six goals without an answer. Again the Redlegs had a couple of answers to climb back into the game with more fluent ball work.

That was all they had though, there would be no more challenges from the home side as it was torn apart in the third term.

The Eagles bigmen, led by Jarrad Redden in ruck and Seb Guilhaus up forward, created havoc and Jack Firns was able to subdue damaging Redleg Lewis Johnston.

The relentless pressure, the smothers and ability to hunt in packs to secure the contested ball just kept coming from the Redlegs. Uncontested marks deep in attack were a constant for the Eagles.

The turnover count from the Redlegs was high and they were hurt on the scoreboard.

“There are honourable losses and dishonourable losses, and that was dishonourable,” Cotton said. “That was purely based on effort and we did not work hard enough.

“That third quarter is not were we are as a footy club.

SCOREBOARD

EAGLES 5.3 9.5 17.8 22.9 (141)

NORWOOD 4.1 7.3 9.6 13.9 (87)

BEST - Eagles: Redden, Poole, Hall, Boyd, Firns, Goldsworthy, von Bertouch. Norwood: Barry, McKenzie, Shenton.

GOALS - Eagles: Guilhaus, Poole 4, Moore 3, Hall, Rowe 2, Lonergan, Comitogianni, Petrenko, N. Hayes, Boyd, Foote, Redden. Norwood: Barry 3, Bampton, Wilson 2, Grigg, Baulderstone, Shenton, Dawe, Grove, Gerloff.

UMPIRES - Broadbent, Lewis, Schramm.

CROWD - 2600 at Coopers Stadium, Norwood.