Cats spearhead Robbie Hare was back to his damaging best, kicking six goals as they prevailed 18.13 (121) to 8.9 (57) in the round six Warrnambool and District league fixture.

Nowell described the victory as a "very solid win".

"It was probably the best game of football we've played since the Panmure game," he said. "Four quarters of really good, competitive football.

"Overall the things that we were lacking in the last few weeks we sort of found today. We're about 90 per cent of where I'd like us. We're still building and we had a few outs this week as well."

The Cats mentor said the side's work refining its forward entries had paid off.

"We stuck to our structures, we tried something different this week, we've been training it over the last week just to try and get our forward entries better," he said. "That worked really well with Robbie Hare kicking six goals and then another 12 goals by individual goal-kickers. A couple of multiples in there.

"Just our whole forward line structure worked really, really well so I'm really happy we've actually made a bit of a difference there."

Nowell also lauded his side's defensive pressure for nullifying the Lions' "short chipping" kicks. Zavier Mungean was a standout for the victors while Nowell praised the impact of the side's younger generation, including Lachie Read, Ruben Swan and Cooper Day.

Meanwhile, at home the Timboon Demons were no match for undefeated Merrivale, falling 2.0 (12) to 23.16 (154) with league-leading goal-kicker Dylan Weir adding another seven to his tally (29).

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: