Ibises rewarded with Tigers’ scalp

Matthew Galea

July 8 2014

Shepparton News

Tatura has sprung one of the upsets of the Regional Premier League season with a 5-1 win against Cobram.

The Ibises put in their best display of the season and capitalised on a number of defensive errors to brutally put the Tigers down.

Although results have sometimes eluded his team, Tatura coach Tom Black has delivered constant improvement in the Ibises’ performances in recent weeks and he felt the emphatic scoreline was deserved reward for effort.

Tatura forward Jared Cunniff tormented a weakened Tigers defence, which was missing John Davkovski (overseas), Adam Gatcum (suspended) and Andrew Zitto (injured), all day and was justly rewarded with the first goal.

Black got the second himself with an indirect free-kick, which he hammered home into the top corner after Cunniff laid the ball off.

Alex Goodwin capitalised on a poor back pass to make it 3-0 before half-time.

Cobram pulled one back at the start of the second half, before Cunniff robbed his defender just inside the box and slammed a volley home to make it 4-1.

Oriol Fernandez rounded out the scoring and the result to the delight of the home crowd.

‘‘You could tell coming off the pitch how big a result it was. Everyone was overjoyed,’’ Black said.

‘‘I don’t think there’s any real secret to what we’re doing. We just try and keep it simple and to be honest I’ve been surprised by the local players here. They’re a lot better than they give themselves credit for.

‘‘Brent Mathers might be towards the end of his career, but he just knows how to play and he really steadies us, Anthony Calandro has been great since coming in and everyone is improving.

‘‘I didn’t expect that kind of game, but I think we played well enough to justify the scoreline and it gives us a lot of confidence going forward.’’

Cobram coach Paul Amadei blamed the result on missing three of his four best defenders.

‘‘I know it will be seen as me being a sore loser, but that was the reality of the situation,’’ Amadei said.

‘‘To lose those three from the back changes a lot and we’ve given them two goals from back passes, so it’s an easy explanation as to what happened, but they were by far the better team.’’

Elsewhere, Shepparton South beat Cobram Victory 4-2 and Shepparton United beat Kyabram Phoenix 3-0.

In division two men’s, Tatura and Cobram drew 2-2, Shepparton United beat the Phoenix 10-0 and Numurkah beat Shepparton 3-1.