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GROVEDALE coach Grant Tanner hailed Saturday's 35-point triumph over fellow finals contender Lara as his side's "best win of the season".
The Tigers, led by an exciting five-goal show from Anglesea recruit Marcus Smith. announced themselves as top-three material with a 10.12 (72) to 4.13 (37) victory, its seventh of the season.
"That would be our best win for the year," Tanner said.
"That's across the board that is, teamwork, everything, that was our best win by far for the season.
"Lara are a very good side and there's no doubt about it. I just thought that everything we put in place worked really well and the boys got reward for effort."
After Lara controlled the ball early, it was Grovedale that kicked the first goal through former Port Adelaide forward Jordan Erskine. Thomas Leeds added another soon after to get the Tigers rolling.
Lara wasted its chances and trailed 0.5 (5) to 2.1 (13), despite having more opportunities and looking the better side early.
It set the tone for the match, as Lara struggled to penetrate Grovedale's defence.
Lara's first goal finally came through the left-footed Rhys Prismall, but the Tigers had the answers through another former Anglesea star Dyson Bell-Warren.
Then the "Smith Show" kicked into gear.
By the main break, the Tigers had a stranglehold on the clash, leading 6.6 (42) to 2.6 (18).
Smith dominated the third quarter, kicking them from everywhere and producing some great celebrations to set the Burdoo Reserve crowd alight, as they stormed to a 40-point lead.
From that point on, the result was never in doubt as they cruised to a 35-point win that leaves the Tigers in second place, a long way from last year's 11th-placed finish.
"We've been planning for this mob for probably three or four weeks and I thought we matched up pretty well," Tanner said.
"They have a pretty powerful forward line but I thought we shut them down pretty well. Then it became a battle of the midfields and we have a good enough forward line to expose their backline.
"We had a big midfield change-up this week.
"Last week we probably got caught out with speed a little bit, so this week we injected a lot more pace in the midfield, which helped us out quite a bit today."
We didn't give a yelp, says Kershaw - Nick Brown
LARA coach Matt Kershaw has put his players on notice after declaring his side had "too many passengers" in Saturday's disappointing 35-point loss to Grovedale.
It was a disappointing and uncharacteristic performance by the Cats who never really appeared in the contest.
"We'll be making changes," an irate Kershaw promised after the loss.
"The difference was Grovedale had 22 blokes pulling the one cart and we had 22 blokes all doing different things.
"We have too many passengers and we can't have that. Too many blokes trying to do their own thing and just trying to go out and get a kick and we were exposed."
This season Kershaw has seen his side deliver some great performances in Lara's six wins from nine matches, but Saturday's effort had him far from pleased.
Kershaw admitted he saw Saturday's performance brewing.
"It was this side's worst performance in my two years as coach and it's been building for about the last two weeks," he said.
"We couldn't have played any worse, it was ordinary.
"We kicked four goals. Four goals for a game isn't acceptable. We were just flat. We were not there to play. We didn't give a yelp."
To make things worse for the Cats, they went into the match without star midfielder Jimmy Allan and lost former AFL ruckman Peter Street to a stomach bug in the first half.
But Kershaw was not allowing his side to use that as an excuse, stating the Cats were a "very good side" without them last year.
Lara expects to have Street and Sam Allan back for next week's crucial game against St Mary's.
"If we lose we are out of the five. Next week's game is cutthroat," Kershaw said.
