GAWLER Central has secured its third win a row, defeating Willaston by 16 goals in Barossa, Light & Gawler senior one netball on Saturday.

The Tigers took some time to get out of first gear and led by just one goal at quarter-time.

However, the Donnybrooks fell away in the second quarter, and trailed by eight goals at the main change.

Central maintained the effort across the second half and moved up to third on the table with the win.

Despite the Tigers’ win, Central coach Reece Turtur said there were things his team could have done better.

“Overall, I was happy to get the two points, but in the context of the game, and the expectations we put on ourselves at the start, there’s plenty of room for improvement,” he said.

“We allowed Willaston to stay in the contest a lot longer than we wanted, and that made it a little bit harder for ourselves.

“I was happy with the overall determined efforts from the girls, especially the defensive efforts and the work rate in defence.”

The Tigers restricted the Donnybrooks to just 33 goals for the match.

Turtur had some individual praise for some of the key contributors.

“I thought Jodie Rich-Nourse was instrumental in attack, her link from the mid-court into the goal circle was strong,” he said,

“Her ability to shoot from range and her work with Dayna (Schmid) under the post was great.

“I thought Donna Victory and Ali Schahinger also had great games, Donna controlled the game, while Ali was great with her defensive efforts and picked off a lot of balls that we were able to  transition down court quite well.”

The Tigers also debuted Sharni Assender, fresh from the intermediate one side.

“She’s been showing some great potential in the past few weeks (in the inters), and she came on in the last quarter and she was fantastic,” Turtur said.

“It just proved that the juniors are looking really strong for Gawler Central.

“Her ability to go out there and make the most of the opportunity was great.”

Willaston will take on Kapunda this week, while the Tigers travel to Angaston.

“They’re always challenging, we’re going to go out there like we have the last couple of weeks and focus on our objectives,” Turtur said.

“We’ll look at Angaston’s results over the last few weeks and see how we can exploit that.”

Around the grounds

Meanwhile, Kapunda scraped past Nuriootpa by one goal.

The surprise packet of the season was impressive throughout the whole game, but the Bombers’ experienced heads carried them over the line.

Elsewhere, Freeling notched its first win of the year at Tanunda’s expense, winning by 13 goals.

The Redlegs recovered from a heavy 71-goal loss to South Gawler a week earlier to secure the stunning victory.

Lastly, Barossa District extended its winning streak with an easy 31-goal win over Angaston.