SOUTHS fired home the final five goals of their round four men’s Premier League Hockey clash with Wanderers in a 20-minute avalanche to blow the Orange outfit away 7-1 on Saturday.

In what looked set to be a close match at Bob Roach Field in the opening half, the hosts stepped it up a notch over the final 35 minutes.

Jaydem Hadson picked up two goals in a match Souths coach Ray Winwood-Smith deemed the best performance from his team so far this season.

“It’s the first game I can honestly say where everything we’ve been training to do has come into play. The boys played the short game exactly the way that we wanted to do,” he said.

“We did a lot of defending in that first half, but Orange typically wanted to go for the long ball and we talked about that and worked on the fact we had to step in front of the player to pick it up.

“We had a couple of players in new positions today and they stood up. Jack Bright played inside left, never played it before, but had an outstanding game. Chris Hanrahan was sensational at centre forward and probably the oldest guy on the field David Burke stepped up today and showed why he was a sensational player in his day.”

Wanderers had plenty of early circle penetrations and a collection of early chances in the opening 15 minutes.

Despite that, Souths got on the board against the run of play thanks to a long strike from Chris Hanrahan at a tight angle.

The visitors continued to maintain the larger share of possession but weren’t able to convert any chances before half time.

Instead Souths doubled their lead five minutes out from the break when Adam Campbell was on hand to smash home a blocked penalty corner attempt from point-blank range.

Four minutes into the new half James Shakeshaft got on the end of a quickly-taken Wanderers penalty to find what would be their only goal of the day.

Souths weren’t deterred by having their lead cut in half and quickly replied with back-to-back goals from penalty corners through Jono Cole and Bryce Hitchcock.

Jaydem Hadson finished off a nice piece of Souths team play down the right wing and then found a second goal inside the final 10 minutes to put Souths up 6-1.

Dan Carter put the seventh goal home for the two blues with five minutes to spare to cap off a memorable day for his side.

“We came out confident before the game. Our structure was strong to start with but there were a couple of lapses in there and Souths took those opportunities,” Wanderers coach Matt Johnson said.

“I think we played our structure well in patches if you break the game up into defence, midfield and our strikers. Each three of those groups did good things throughout the game, it’s just we weren’t piecing things together between them.”

SOUTHS 7 (Jaydem Hadson 2, Bryce Hitchcock, Daniel Carter, Chris Hanrahan, Adam Campbell, Jono Cole) defeated ORANGE WANDERERS 1 (James Shakeshaft).