Coastal Premier League: Port Saints defeat Taree Wildcats on June 26

It ended a challenging two-week winless streak where they had scored just two goals and conceded nine.

The Wildcats opened the scoring through Kyle Brady who finished a perfectly executed counter-attacking move inside five minutes and Goodman would have been forgiven for thinking 'here we go again'.

But Saints sparked into action, hit the post and Wildcats 'keeper Dylan Webber twice in the ensuing 15 minutes before Mike Finlayson and Anthony Jamieson found the back of the net before half-time.

Roan Whiteman added a second-half penalty as the Port Macquarie side registered a much-needed three points.

"Relief. Relief is my reaction. We take a deep breath and say 'let's go again'," Goodman said.

"I expected to win the game. We've got talent in the team and good enough players in the team so I do expect to win a game like that, for sure."

After a testing opening quarter of the game, Saints dominated for large periods.

"Apart from the one incident they didn't really trouble us and the only thing we didn't do is we didn't put it to bed early enough," Goodman said.

"Between 1-0 and our first goal we had two chances where I still don't know how it didn't go in.

"I think in the end 3-1 probably looks good on their behalf, I thought it was more than a 3-1 game but it is what it is. We got the win, we got a couple of goals under pressure so let's see if we can take it into this week."

Wildcats coach Ben Sedlen felt Whiteman's second-half spot kick was the result of a "dubious" decision although he was satisfied with his team's overall performance.

"The penalty was a poor decision in my opinion with the rules they have nowadays," he said.

"They had a fair few more chances than us and our goalkeeper had a pretty good game. Dylan would have been close to our best. He's been close to our best the last few weeks to be honest."

The Taree side were up against it with attacking trio Sam Modderno, Jackson Witts and Dylan Murphy all unavailable.

"It makes it hard to score goals when three of your front four are missing, but to go one ahead was impressive," Sedlen said.

"The players are learning more than me that they are good enough to play at this level. I said from the start we had players more than capable of competing and they just had to believe in themselves.

"They're starting to play with a little bit of structure and believe in themselves a bit more."

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