Game #923, Round 6 5/5/2006 @ Adelaide Oval
Centrals 19.19(133) def. North 9.11(65)

The turning point that many Dogs fans expected may have arrived on Friday night with their second consecutive 68-point win - this time over the perennially overrated Roosters.

It was good to see S.Cochrane, Cowan, Currie and Schell back in the side but there's more to it than that. Getting a couple of key positions covered meant we didn't need to play other guys out of position. Quinton Graham was back in defence where he belongs. And with Stuey Cochrane back in defence too, things looked solid again. MacKenzie also could play his familiar game instead of being used as a big man up front. And Scoullar was now able to take a breather, rather than shoulder the majority of the ruck work.

O'Sullivan has adjusted to the pace of SANFL footy - he was into everything, just like his predecessor - maybe it's the No.7 guernsey? And the young lads look like fully fledged league players: Leigh and Justin Weshoff, Musolino, Norworthy and Dutschke - all fantastic! James Gowans, with his brother missing, looked like he decided to step up even more than he usually does. A true leader out there on Friday night.

Basically, everything fell into place for this game. And even though we're still missing players, the overall balance of the side is back. I shudder for the rest of the league considering we have so many other quality premiership-winning players to come back into the side (eg. Chris Gowans, Richard Cochrane, Adam Switala, Nathan Steinberner, Brad Symes).

Funniest thing heard on the night was North supporters whining about their injury list... an injury list that is NOTHING compared to ours. And I guess they weren't aware that we had the walking wounded on our bench during the game as well.

No excuses, North were crap. I've never seen a side just "give up" the way they seemed to do when the pressure was applied. There is no substitute for relentless tackling (67 effective tackles to 31), pressure and discipline. Money in the bank and all the recruits in the world can't help you there. North supporters should be very disappointed at the lack of heart and discipline.

And what's the story with North supporters these days? They had a flag-waving group moving end-to-end and another group of loud-mouthed, middle-aged drop kicks chanting "U-REDS" under the scoreboard! I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but that was getting creepy! Funny thing is, their "U-REDS" chant is such a perfect copy of our "U-DOGS" chant that the players probably think it's Centrals fans chanting! So thanks for the back-up vocals, North supporters.

North is just lucky Schell was woeful in front of goal again. If he had kicked straight, we would have won by 100 points easily. Schell kicked 5 goals and about 6 or 7 points. And those points were all easy shots!

The Reserves had an exciting 1-point win over North too.

Some stats: 68 points is our highest winning margin over North at Adelaide Oval. Centrals has won the last 3 games against North and 21 of the last 22 games. An amazing record of dominance going back 10 years.