Pettifer breaks Moama hearts in thrilling contest

But the visitors came out firing in the second half, booting five goals in a dominant third term while keeping the Purples scoreless, taking the lead and enjoying a 10-point buffer at the final change.

A low-scoring, gritty last term ensued with only two goals kicked, both by Pettifer, as he put Nathalia five points up with more than 22 minutes gone, which proved to be enough as the siren sounded shortly after to condemn Moama to a heartbreaking defeat.

Magpies co-coach Jye Warren lamented his side’s slow start to the contest, which came after it was forced to scramble for a replacement following some late outs.

“I think all it really came down to was the first quarter,” he said.

“We unfortunately had James Whitehead go down in the warm-up with a groin injury and Ned Osborne pulled out that morning as well with a migraine.

“I think we were a bit flustered from that and we just didn’t come to play in the first quarter.

“They kicked six goals to our (three) and it’s obviously quite hard to get back from that, but we clawed our way back into the game and got in front, but just a couple of mistakes from a couple of inexperienced boys that lost the opportunity for us to keep the ball in our forward half and Nathalia capitalised.

“(They had) two kicks inside forward 50 and Kayne Pettifer kicks a goal to win it for them, pretty much.”

However, there was still plenty of optimism among the group considering it was even in with a shot after its poor start.

In similar situations this year, namely against Deniliquin, the Magpies have dropped their heads, so to respond in such a fashion on Saturday was encouraging, Warren said

“We’ve looked at that since Deniliquin, as we spoke about a few weeks ago, a lot of blokes threw the white flag up in the air and were giving up, essentially,” he said.

“After half-time (on Saturday), to come out and respond to our message in the rooms and the pressure that Nathalia were putting on us was just unbelievable by the boys.

“We touched on that at the end of the game. Unfortunately we didn’t get the win, but to be able to respond like that, I was super proud of the boys.”

One area of improvement the coaching panel at Moama highlighted at the start of the year was in red time situations with the game on the line.

While it managed to hold on to wins against Rumbalara and Barooga with the game still up for grabs late earlier this season, it was unable to do so on Saturday, something which would be looked at throughout the week, Warren said.

“Probably the big thing that we really noticed in the reserves and seniors was just looking at the time. Blokes need to really understand that some quarters don’t go past 25 minutes,” he said.

“There’s going to be points throughout the week where we are going to work on some transition drills where we’ll go ‘yep, we’re going fast this time’ or ‘no, we’ve got to slow it down, it’s red time’.

“That awareness out on the ground, I think a few of our younger boys yesterday didn’t quite understand that, they didn’t take a good look at the clock and they tried to go fast and unfortunately it didn’t come off.”

The assignments don’t get any easier for the Magpies before the side enjoys a week off due to the split round, with Congupna awaiting next Saturday.

Moama will look to get back to winning ways against the ladder-leader, but will need to hand the Road only their second loss for the season if it is to do so.