Riverina League enhanced it’s reputation as the premier competition within AFL Riverina with a devastating 85-point win over Farrer League on Saturday.
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In the two league’s first meeting in eight years, Riverina got on top of the contest early before eventually embarrassing the Farrer League, 16.16 (112) to 3.9 (27) at Robertson Oval.
It was hard and fast early but once both teams found their feet, it was Riverina League who were far too quick and slick for their opponents.
Riverina worked to a 26-point lead at half-time but ran riot in a one-sided second half with 10 goals to one.
Riverina had winners all over the park and it started with Wagga Tigers coach Shaun Campbell in the midfield.
He was everywhere in his first game for a month, and was closely followed by late inclusion Matt Rainbird, running defender Campbell Lovell and ruckman Jacob Olsson.
Riverina League assistant coach Troy Maiden hopes the result settles the debate about the two competitions.
“There’s obviously been a lot of talk about it. It puts us where we want to be,” Maiden said.
“We want to be considered the stronger league and we think we are, but a lot of people may think differently.
“I think today shows we’ve got good players in our league and they played well. It’s good to see the good players put their hands up to play.”
Maiden was not surprised by the strength of the performance from Riverina.
“No. We knew we had a good side, we were probably a little bit worried about the size of their forward line to start with but I thought our defenders played really well and they didn’t just defend, they actually gave us some really good run out of the backline as well,” he said.
“It was a good victory and we did miss a lot of shots on goal that were kickable.
“Early on we probably overused the ball a little bit but when we went back to that giving one handball and running, I thought we moved the ball well on the outside.”
Maiden was forced to take over coaching duties when Guy Orton was taken from the field on a stretcher in the second quarter after being knocked out.
He was not the only casualty with Riverina also losing Luke Redfern to a hamstring injury, while Farrer’s Nathan Dowdle went down in the first three minutes with a devastating knee injury.
Riverina got on top in the midfield, courtesy of Olsson and Campbell.
Their defence was superb with Lovell, Matt Bailey, Nick McCormack and Tom Meline all proving outstanding.
In attack, they functioned well and shared the workload with Marc Geppert, Mick Duncan and Riley Corbett all kicking three goals each.
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