The Hoppers coach was livid after his team’s sub-standard showing against Wangaratta Rovers last round and kept the players back at training on Tuesday night until 10pm to ram home certain aspects of their insipid display.

The response was immediate as the Hoppers could have had the game wrapped up by quarter time, but some inaccurate kicking delayed the inevitable as North Albury kicked 11 goals to three after the long break to consolidate in third spot.

“We had a very big Tuesday night,” Hodgson said.

“We had a couple of hours on the track and a couple of hours in the rooms assessing last week’s loss honestly.

“We worked through things pretty well and were pretty honest and I think we turned things around today.

“I thought some of the guys who let us down last week really turned up to play today.

“We will cop losses like all sides, but last week there was just a real lack of effort.

“But the effort was there today, no doubt.”

The Hoppers onballers including Brandon Ryan, Brad Horn and Joel Mackie feasted on the ruck dominance of Rob Hodgson from the first bounce, but couldn’t translate the dominance on the scoreboard.

They had nine scoring shots to one, but only led by 23 points at the first break.

The Hoppers threatened to rip open the game further in the second term when they kicked the first two goals to lead by 36 points.

Corowa-Rutherglen had not scored a goal until the 12-minute mark of the second term, but the first from the boot of Lee Schmidt kick-started a resurgence.

They started to break even in the middle of the ground and banged on a further three goals for the term to trail by 18 points at half-time.

Nic Raines and Jacob Ryan were the catalysts of the Roos’ revival and Dustin Mills’ work ethic in repeatedly presenting across half-forward was full of merit.

Adam Prior and Kade Kuschert were engaged in an engrossing head-to-head battle with the Roos defender doing well to keep his opponent to one goal at half-time.

But as the Hoppers re-asserted their supremacy after half-time Prior became a major factor.

He dragged down three screamers and kicked five goals after the break to finish with six and the honours against Kuschert.

Brent Piltz was also a constant nemesis for the Roos with his long kicking from defence and his ability to drift down into dangerous position always put the opposition backline under pressure.

He kicked two goals in the third term including one of his signature long bombs from outside 50m.

Hodgson toiled heroically in the ruck for the Hoppers and Josh McLoughlan repeatedly came under notice on the wing with his silky skills.

“It might not have been pretty, but the main thing we set out to achieve today was getting our hands on the ball,” Hodgson said.

“I thought we did that for most of the day because we were terrible last week in that respect against Wang Rovers.

“With the inside 50s being 17-3 at quarter time I would have liked to be further in front, but I thought we had control for most of the day.”

The depleted Roos had 10 players missing from their strongest possible side on Saturday due to injury and unavailability in the case of star forward Richard Ambrose, who dropped out of the selected side.

“I thought up until half-time the boys were going OK and gave ourselves a bit of a chance, but in the end we ran out of legs,” Roos coach Brad Campbell said.

“A lot of the blokes missing this week are blokes who have been carrying injuries for the last 3-4 weeks.

“It has resulted in a lot of guys going at only 70 per cent and just can’t do it at this standard of footy and we’ve been caught out.”