Round Eleven
North Beach Sea Eagles 44 – South Perth Lions 6
By PETER ROWE
Coach Phil Douché summed up the Sea Eagles solid 44-6 win over South Perth at Charles Riley Reserve on Saturday perfectly: “We stuck to our gameplan.”
The win gave North Beach a two point lead atop the NRLWA Fuel to Go and Play Premiership with five rounds of the regular season left.
“We were upset with ourselves after losing to Willagee the week before, so had something to prove – and we did.” Douché said.
But Douché counselled to not look too much at the result, given both sides were missing key players.
“Both teams had players out, so it will be very different at the end of the year,” he added.
“I guess we had better depth and that proved the difference.”
Centre Roydon Gillett played his best game of the season as both coaches named him best on ground and half Jeremy Wallace, who last week was honest enough to take ownership of the loss to the Bears, also stood out.
Photo – Carmel Potter-Green
Gillett opened the scoring on the left edge before forward Tom Fry crossed under the posts.
Winger Kitione Nairobi added another in the right corner after some clever and quick hands exposed a gap and Jaylen Grey then barged over for anther four-pointer.
Fullback Te Ra Hare Ahuriri was the first to cross after the interval after a break down the left edge from Gillett and Grey grabbed a second on the back of an open side shift.
At 38-0 the game was over but the Lions never gave up, lock Oisin Keating scoring before a penalty and a Justin Buckley dive across the line wrapped up the win.
South Perth coach Duane Gwiazdzinski said the loss hurt but admitted he was down on numbers to select from.
Travis Haney heads a cast of unavailable players for the Lions / Photo – Carmel Potter-Green
“Beach played well and we didn’t touch the ball for the first 20 minutes,” he said.
“They cleaned us up on the edges and Roydon was superb for them.
“We will regroup and I know it’s a learning process for some of our players, so I don’t want to be critical. The loss will hurt, but we will all learn a lot from it.”
Gwiazdzinski conceded North Beach were too quick at times for his defence to cover, but said it was back to business for the round 12 next Saturday against Joondalup.
“We will work on a few things and make adjustments,” he said.
“We have 10 first grade players out at the moment, so I’m hoping we can get a few back as we head to the business end of the season.”
Photo – Carmel Potter-Green