Technical maintains lead with 41 win while Caversham jumps into second place

DUNEDIN Technical carried on towards the South Island travelling league with a solid 41 victory over Northern to remain top of the league.

Queenstown and Southland both lost and Queenstown losing to Caversham allowed Caversham to leapfrog it into second spot with one round remaining.

Next week’s games could not have been planned better with firstplaced Technical entertaining Caversham and thirdplace Queenstown hosting Southland in fourth place.

Roslyn, in fifth place, still has an opportunity to proceed but will be relying on other results to go its way. The top three teams progress to the South Island league.

Technical and Queenstown have another match to play after their game was called off last week because of bad weather.

Caversham retained the Blair Davidson Trophy with a 20 victory over Queenstown at Hancock Park. With Andrew Ridden back from suspension Caversham was dominant from the start.

Following a fluent move with players running off the ball, pulling Queenstown’s defenders apart, Ryan Fleming found the space to play a great ball through to Allan McBride, who came from behind his marker and round the goalkeeper to give Caversham a 10 lead, which it held to halftime. It soon doubled the lead when Ben Wade’s shot was not able to be held and midfielder Michael Hogan was on hand to drive the ball home from 15m out, with only five minutes of the second half gone.

Queenstown took the game to Caversham in an attempt to score and Caversham also countered.

With the game becoming stretched there were some hard challenges and Fleming was sent off so Caversham ended the game with 10 men.

Dunedin Technical beat Northern 41 and was 30 ahead by halftime, thanks to a goal from Alistair Rickerby and a brace by Tim McLennan.

The halftime lead reflected the ascendancy Technical had in the

first half. Northern is a team in transition this year and, coached by Brazilian Luiz Uehara, did not give up.

In the second half a period of intelligent football allowed youngster Harry Fraser to score a brilliant goal. Latham Greig impressed for Northern with a performance of tactical discipline and individual flair.

In an upset in Invercargill, Mosgiel completely dominated Southland and went ahead on five minutes when Southland’s keeper Elliott Binks was unable to grasp a Regan Coldicott free kick and Fernando Jr Montado tapped in the loose ball.

Coldicott repeated the dose on 20 minutes with another curling free kick into the top corner — this time the keeper was unable to get a hand to it.

Mosgiel made it 30 following an interchange of passes between Coldicott and Riley Anderton for Anderton to tap home with 35 minutes gone.

Southland had good periods of possession but Hayato Wakino was well shackled by Liam Dungey. What chances it did create could not find a way past Sean Mcdonald, who pulled off a few stellar saves.

Anderton slotted home his second and Mosgiel’s fourth goal on 66 minutes, following a great run and cross from youngster Charlie Gruppelaar to make the game safe.

Green Island beat University 10, following a goalless first half where Green Island was denied by a combination of saves from University gloveman Thomas Gray and the woodwork.

A good team move down the left flank created space for Lewis Wall to score the only goal of the game in the second half