AUSTRALIAN RULES
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SIX-GOAL performances from Andrew Nelson and Luke Pryor led the Orange Tigers to a gargantuan 176-point victory over Dubbo on Saturday, keeping the Central West AFL reigning champions’ undefeated record in tact.
Pryor, a full-forward and captain-coach of the Tigers’ reserve grade side, is no stranger to snaring bagfuls of majors, but Nelson is widely regarded as a defensive player, and wound back the clock at centre-half-forward on Saturday.
“Nelso played a blinder,” Orange Tigers coach Nathan Pearce, who filled in and kicked three goals himself, said.
“He actually played centre-half-forward in the 2013 grand final and did a good job, but we have been using him in the backline recently.
“We thought we’d trial him up there again, and he played very well. He added some much needed structure to our forward line, and acted as a forward-ruck option as well.”
Pearce labelled the 32-goals-to-four romping his side’s “best performance of the year, easily”, and said considering the black and golds had several stars out, the win was even more encouraging.
“It just goes to show even if we have one or 10 guys out, the players taking their spots fit in very easily,” Pearce said.
“This group, we’ll say about 50 players, have been training together now for several years, and know all the structures and game plans well across the grades. It makes the transition easy.
“It was easily our strongest performance of the year, mainly because of the way kept intensity across four quarters. Recently we’ve been changing the way we play in the second half, and we didn’t do that on Saturday.
“That’s the most important thing to take from it I think.”
The result was all but put to bed in the first term of the clash, with Orange piling on 50 points to Dubbo’s eight.
The Tigers then kicked 30 more unanswered points in the second quarter, before adding 117 to Dubbo’s 22 in the second half.
ORANGE TIGERS 32.14 (206) def DUBBO DEMONS 4.6 (30).
