The result elevated Souths into a share of third place at the halfway point of the season and given it came on the back of a three-week break, coach Ray Winwood-Smith was delighted.

“When you have all your players in the one place at the one time, it makes a huge difference,” he said.

“We came out today and we played really well, our short game was excellent and the result tells the story.

“The short game was what we had worked on, and controlling the midfield, and we dominated the midfield today and it reflected in the score.”

Winwood-Smith tinkered with his line-up for the match, using Adam Campbell and Matt Johnston in defence. It worked well as Souths’ kept a clean sheet for the first time this season.

The first 10 minutes was a little scrappy, but the hosts soon settled into the contest. Four of Souths’ goals came from the field, the other two from penalty corner plays.

While Zig Zag goalkeeper Adrian Baker was superb and kept it from being an even more one-sided contest, Souths kept up its intensity to come away with a handy result.

“I think we controlled it pretty well from the start, but they played 11 behind the ball at the beginning and tried to frustrate us. But our guys showed a lot of patience and controlled the ball well,” Winwood-Smith said.

“We scored a couple of goals between the 10-12 minutes mark and then we just pushed on from there. 

“We had a lot of opportunities, at least today we were getting our shots on goal and in previous games that had probably been our downfall, we haven’t been able to get clean shots.

“Their goalkeeper had an absolute blinder, so it could have been even more different again.”