Marist give Petone thrashing to finish season on high

Palmerston North Marist fans must be left wondering what might have been, as for the second consecutive week they pumped six goals past a fellow Central League side.

This time Petone was on the receiving end of a 6-0 hiding at Memorial Park on Saturday.

Over the past three weeks and with any perceived threat of relegation safely put to bed, Marist have been a different side.

They narrowly lost 3-2 to Napier City Rovers after dominating the second spell two weeks ago, then beat fourth-placed Western Suburbs 6-0 last week.

Marist coach Scott Hales always thought he had a team to reach the top four and over the past two weeks his team have shown when they’re on their game, they are a match for any team in the league.

There’s no doubt Marist’s strength in recent weeks has been a far tighter defence than earlier in the season, with all the silly errors gone and replaced by a defence that hasn’t allowed opposition teams a free run into their goal area, with strong tackling and quickly closing down opposition players.

The defence has been well marshalled by central defender Graham Craven’s hard-nosed approach.

Craven has been one of the league’s outstanding defenders and, along with Robbie Yule, they’ve totally shut down opponents.

Palmerston North Boys’ High

School goalkeeper Liam Outtrim has only had to make three saves in the past two games, one of which was a brilliant save from one of his own players against Petone.

With a solid defence it’s allowed midfielders Nathan Cooksley and Josh Margetts room to set wide strikers Jerram Tuck and the much-improved Rhys Galyer away.

Given space, neither Petone or Wests, have been able to cope with them.

Tuck needed one goal to be level golden boot, but he made light work of that, scoring in the 10th minute and completing a hat-trick in less than 30 minutes, then adding a fourth early in the second spell after Marist led 5-0 at the break.

Tuck ended the season with 19 goals, three ahead of Miramar Rangers’ Ben Harris.

Any doubt about Marist’s beating Petone and finishing in eighth place in the league ended in the first minute when Cooksley scored, followed by Tuck’s hattrick and another by Cooksley.

Napier City Rovers reserves beat Red Sox-manawatu 7-1 in the Federation Cup final in Napier.

The cup is for teams not in the Central League or having entered the Chatham Cup.