BENALLA has kept its top four hopes alive, and in the process put a serious dent in Bright's chances of reaching the Ovens and King finals series.
Despite coming off a series of strong performances over the past month, the Mountain Men proved no match for the Panthers at Friendlies Reserve, going down by 83 points.
While Bright had the first goal on the board early in the opening term, the match was as good as over by quarter time as Benalla rattled off eight straight goals to take a 40-point lead into the change.
But the Panthers refused to take their foot off the pedal, increasing their lead at every change as Bright finished with a wasteful 6.21.
Benalla coach Ben Wapling said the performance was the result of his charges getting back to their best football after a 30-minute lapse against Greta last week led to a 13-point loss.
"We did a lot of soul searching this week, and really looked into what went wrong," Wapling said.
"We were hurting pretty badly after losing to Greta, so we were a lot more motivated this week there was a lot to play for.
"Talking to people after the match a lot of them said they thought it was the best we've played all year, and I thought it was a really good illustration of how well we can play when we get it right."
The major remedies were applied in attack, with Michael Donehue's return and subsequent seven-goal haul a big part of the turnaround.
"We just weren't working hard enough up forward, so we needed to make sure our forwards were getting in front," Wapling said.
"And we were really bombing away last week and not getting it into the hot spot, so our big guys couldn't get their hands on the ball.
"Having Donners (Donehue) back meant we could muck around with the structure a bit more with Dockers (Kaine Dockery) and Spoons (Brendan Smith) as well.
"So when we pushed the ball in deep the structure worked well."
Playing his fourth game back after a three-month injury lay off, Joel Hearn was dominant in defence, while Ian Rawlings also starred in an uncustomary role down back.
"Hornet (Hearn) was fantastic he really held our defence together," Wapling said.
"His marks and his one percenters were outstanding he would have had more tackles than anyone on the ground.
"Easy (Rawlings) played at half back and had an absolute cracker.
By - SCOTT ANDERSON.
www.nenews.com.au
HEAVY KNOCK: North Wangaratta's Joel Bihun collides with Greta coach Daniel McLaughlin during Saturday's match.PHOTO: Cheryl Browne
Last Modified on 07/08/2012 07:00