A goal-of-the-year contender from Sam Huxtable put the exclamation point on Werribee’s 3-1 win over Knox in a cut-throat Hockey Victoria Vic League 2 semi-final in Footscray on Sunday.
With the Tigers leading comfortably by two goals, Huxtable reached for the top shelf with a stunning insurance goal that will be talked about for some time by the folk at The Cage.
“He got the ball on our attack 25-yard line and worked it around the baseline, did a couple of pirouettes with his skill, probably beat about three of their players, and got it past their goalie,” Tigers coach Andrew Purcell told Star Weekly.
“It was a bit of individual brilliance, a really good-quality goal.”
While Huxtable’s goal bewitched Knox, it was the more routine work of the Tigers that has impressed Purcell in recent times.
Six weeks ago, the Tigers got together and vowed to produce for the full 70 minutes, week in and week out, not the fleeting patches of form they showed in the first half of the year.
The Tigers are on a six-game winning streak and Purcell puts it down to the players’ strict adherence to team plans and structures.
But for a moment late in the semi-final, the Tigers went back to their old ways and gifted Knox a late consolation goal.
That left Purcell none too pleased even though the game was already in his side’s keeping.
“We had some brilliant passages of play,” he said.
“We got an early goal which gave us the ascendancy, which is something we really focused on before the game.
“We wanted to put them under pressure early and execute the basics well. They got a late goal when we took the pressure off a bit, when we moved away from what we had been doing well the past six weeks.”
The Tigers took a two-goal lead into half- time after goals to Josh Pace and Matt Skoglund. Pace’s, from a short corner, was taken straight from the training field.
“It was a set play,” Purcell said. “It was one we’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks and finally executed how we wanted to.”
The Tigers have set up a mouth-watering preliminary final clash with minor premiers PEGS, who were the competition’s dominant side for the first 16 weeks but have lost two of their past three matches. One of those was against Werribee in the penultimate round of the season.
“I think the guys will go in there with some confidence knowing we match up well against them,” Purcell said. “It’s up to us to execute our game plan and try to close down their key playmakers.
“We can’t allow them to get short corners.
“That’s been their big strength and their leading goalscorer [Harjeet Singh] has scored 23 goals and I think most of them have come from short corners.”
