The Douglas Dragons showed their class on Friday evening at their Mossman home ground.  They hosted HMong who are in second place on the ladder and were considered to be their nearest rivals in quality of play. 

The Dragons put paid to any further thoughts along those lines with a masterful demonstration of controlled attack.  They slotted eleven goals past their floundering opposition. 

The HMong team were at a disadvantage from the start being much smaller in stature that the Dragons but Head Coach Darren Case worried that their busy, fast paced style might give his taller defenders some problems as they tried to pierce the defence in the opening few minutes, laid down a perfect game plan.  

In fact the Dragons defence, marshalled superbly by Jordon Butters handled everything that these smaller attackers could throw at them and quite quickly took control of the game building confidently and carefully from the back. The Dragons attacked consistently opening the scoring after just 10 mins. 

One moment where Coach Case' fears looked like they may have some foundation saw the only controversial moment of the game.  H'Mong insisted they had scored a goal to level the match with a break away pass threaded through the Dragons defence but the ball either went through the side netting and out the other side or hit the side netting without entering the net.  From the sidelines it was impossible to tell but the Referee initially ruled no goal and the score stayed at 1-0 to the Dragons. 

However, within the next 15 minutes the Dragons were 5-0 up and the matter seemed irrelevant.  At half time the HMong players continued their protest and the referee after examination of the side-netting actually admitted his error and re-instated the goal some 30 minutes after the incident. 

The half time score was therefore changed to 6-1 still in favour of the Dragons. 

The Dragons came out firing in the second half and a candidate for fastest goal of the season was scored after just 20 secs.  All credit to the visiting team they never let their heads drop but their opposition were playing football of a different class, winning all the midfield possession and attacking with numbers through the centre time after time. 

In fact but for a couple of open goal misses the score could have been much higher than the final score of 11-1. 

This puts the Dragons in an unassailable lead at the top of the ladder with two games still to play. 

They will then march forward to the Finals having lost just one early game all season. 

Goal Scorers Douglas Dragons:

Tither, Nicholas L (36)
Abedini, Joseph (38)
Tither, Nicholas L (40)
Gaughran, Graham F (42)
Stemp, Duncan K (46)
Abedini, Joseph (72)
Gilchrist, Scott (73)
Tither, Nicholas L (80)
Abedini, Joseph (81)
Taotong, Yuttana M (88)
Gilchrist, Scott (9)