Coorow Latham bounce back with hard-fought Dongara win as Tigers leave it late against Mingenew

Coorow Latham were made to work hard against a spirited Dongara Eagles as the Magpies bounced back from their first loss of the season.

The Magpies got the win away from home 13.14 (92) to 10.5 (65) thanks to four goals from Erick Bashemule and Gerard O’Sullivan.

Having tasted defeat for the first time this year, Coorow would have been expecting an easy rebound win against the bottom-of-the-table Eagles who they smashed by more than 100 points in their last meeting.

The Magpies did have the majority of possession and had 12 more scoring shots, but were wasteful to allow the Eagles to stay within touch.

The Eagles’ charge was more of a flat push with two goals to Jeremy and Troy Bedford, Paul Kappeler and Beau Philipps but they were always going against the tide.

While the Magpies were below their best, Bashemule and O’Sullivan along with Jacob Comley, who kicked three goals, were too much for the Eagles to handle.

The Morawa Tigers almost cost themselves the match against the Mingenew Bulldogs with some wayward kicking but straightened up late to take the match 10.18 (78) to 4.7 (31).

While still a mathematical possibility, the Bulldogs needed to win the clash over Morawa to have any hope of finals footy and took an early lead thanks to Matt Bickford.

It looked like the Tigers were going to run away with the match in the second half with eight scoring shots to three but they left the door open with their inaccuracy.

It became even more worrisome in the third quarter when they managed just four behinds as the Bulldogs closed the gap to 10 points and threatened a boilover.

But in the absence of accuracy, the Tigers just bulldozed Mingenew with the weight of numbers as they kicked 5.7 in the final quarter while keeping the Bulldogs scoreless to run away with the match.

Alan Egan was the pick of the forwards with four goals while Thomas Carslake, Matt Pettit, Henry Little and Flynn Coaker were all among the best.