Five-star Cooks Hill strike maiden win in NPL

Promoted from Northern League One this season, Cooks Hill made a slow start in the top division before an encouraging 1-0 loss to defending premiers Lambton Jaffas and a 3-all draw with unbeaten leaders Charlestown in their past two games.

Up against eighth-placed Lakes at Fearnley Dawes Athletics Field, Cooks Hill delivered on their promise thanks to doubles from Sam Webb and Josh Benson, and one goal from defender Jon Griffiths.

Cooks Hill back up against last-placed Adamstown on Saturday and Tanchevski said his side needed to repeat the performance.

"When you look at the table, we've played the top five teams and we hadn't played the bottom five," Tanchevski said.

"We were probably one win away from being content with our start to the season, after drawing with Maitland and Charlestown and going down 1-0 to Jaffas, given we're coming up a division and playing the top teams first.

"For us now, against the teams around us, it's important to put in a good performance, and that's what we talked about last night.

"We've got to win those games, be competitive and play our football. And looking at our last three performances, I think our performances are getting better each week.

"We've come up to an acceptable level and that's our minimum standard now."

Griffiths opened the scoring in the 12th minute with a tap in off a header.

Benson doubled the lead in the 50th minute with a header off a Newton corner kick. He had his brace three minutes later off the crossbar with another header, this time from a ball in from marquee Jacob Pepper.

Webb made it 4-0 in the 66th minute with a back-post tap in from Daniel Yaxley's run in behind and cut back.

Webb's double came in spectacular style in the 79th minute when he curled a 25-metre free kick inside the right post.

Tanchevski said the work of Newton, Webb and Benson up front had been crucial in the recent turnaround, while Pepper played his best game yet for the club on Wednesday night.

"We feel like it's been coming for a little while," he said. "The first few weeks we were still working out positions, what our best structure is with what we had. Now we're starting to get our full complement back as well. The football last night was really good. We moved the ball well, we had huge amounts of possession and controlled the game."

The other NPL catch-up game set down for Wednesday night, the half-completed Broadmeadow v Weston match at Magic Park, was postponed.

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