St Pat’s sealed the men’s Premier League Hockey minor premiership in fine style on Saturday, posting its most dominant win of the season thus far when downing Orange Wanderers 7-1.

Three early goals set up the win at the Cooke Hockey Complex, one which means the Saints will host the major semi-final against Lithgow Panthers.

“I just said to the boys half the job done now, let’s finish it off. That’s a nice reward,” Saints coach Shane Conroy said.

“Top two was what we wanted at the start of the year, I’ve said that throughout the year, so yeah, it was nice.”

Having strung together a strong opening to the game, Pat’s went to half-time with a 4-1 lead.

In the second half they went on with the job, Charlie Schofield finishing with four goals and Jaden Ekert a hat-trick. Connor Morris scored Wanderers’ goal.

“We changed our structure up a little bit and that seemed to pay dividends, it gave our strikers a little bit more room up front,” Conroy said.

“Last week our start was slow and I really stressed to the boys the importance of the first 10 minutes today. That’s when we did it, so it was good.

“It was nice to get a few goals, I don’t think we’d won by four all year before today – it’s good to go into semis on that.”

For Wanderers, Saturday’s match was the end of season 2017, the Orange outfit finishing in fifth spot.

Skipper Alex Said admitted the slow start cost his side.

“It was definitely a tough way to end it, it was disappointing it got to a 3-0 scoreline pretty early,” he said.

“We grasped it back and got that goal and started to build momentum and maintain that ball a little bit more, but then we went downhill a bit again.

“When we maintained the ball we looked alright, but that has sort of been the year, a couple of lapses and it comes back and hurts us.”

While the Saints will now look ahead to host Lithgow Panthers in a grand final qualifier, Said is hoping Wanderers can build on 2017 and return a more consistent team next year.

“We are lucky we have a very young squad there. The likes of myself and Adam Hurford might not be back next year, but it depends on how it goes,” he said.

“We also have some good young fellas coming up, so Wanderers are in a good place, we’ve just got to keep building.

“We proved we could string some good games together, but then we’d have those games where we get a bit of a touch up and then you have to start all other again.”