MARCUS: Well boys, what a lovely Spring-like day on the weather front for us on Saturday, and an even better Sunday for one of us in particular, which we’ll come to in a second. Before we do, Jonty, can you please start us off with your pick for best action?
JONTY: A little bit like last week, it was a difficult weekend for me. Devon Meadows got thumped again and there wasn’t a heap to write home about. It was a really nice day in the first half and then the weather really set in after half time, meaning Devon was going to have to come from behind in wet conditions. That was difficult because they hadn’t even been able to handle the footy in dry conditions of late. It was an embarrassing day for them in the end, but best action is in two parts. Alex Canal was really challenged last week in terms of his hardness and physicality. He brought it on Sunday, and so did Joel Hillis, who kicked seven goals from the midfield. He was on a different stratosphere to the rest of his teammates, and watching him post-game in the rooms, I thought to myself of his teammates ‘how can you sit there next to him knowing how well he played, knowing he was best on the ground by a mile but had no one anywhere near him?’. It was arguably the best game I’ve seen him play.
DAVE: I’ve got to give a shout out to Nar Nar Goon’s Ryan Bromley. Kilcunda-Bass won the toss on Saturday at Inverloch and chose to kick into a howling breeze, with the tactic to absolutely flood the backline, and it worked in the first quarter. One thing it didn’t count on, however, was Bromley kicking a goal from 65 metres out to break the shackles in the first quarter. He got the ball on the run and launched a rocket from inside the square. But I’m going to the Outer East Football Netball women’s grand final yesterday. Two of the Gippsland Power girls who have played a bit of footy at Pakenham this year dominated yesterday; Ava Deszcz and Abby Hobson. Abby had an injury coming in and it was a tough week for her mentally to get up and play in this one. Halfway through the last quarter, Ava marked the ball 70 metres out and Abbey took off on the lead, almost like a perfectly synchronised Swiss watch. Ava laced her out with a 45-metre pass that went about three metres off the ground and you could hear the ohhh’s and ahhh’s in the crowd, thinking, ‘oh my god, that’s AFLW quality stuff.’ Abby kicked the goal and that was the moment we (Pakenham) thought we were home.
MARCUS: My best action goes to a collection of Emerald players who helped to break the game open in the third quarter against Berwick Springs on Saturday, culminating in an important goal for Adrian Russo. They were peppering the goals at this stage but just couldn’t kick straight and the game was in the balance. Michael Misso from the Titans had the ball at half back on a slow play and had nothing to kick to, so Jared Derksen and Jake Cawsey forced a rush kick and turnover, and when the ball came back inside the 50, Russo kicked a lovely set shot in front of the grandstand and vocal Emerald supporters, giving a big double fist pump. From then on, Emerald wasn’t really troubled for the rest of the afternoon and secured such a vital win in the club’s history.
PAKENHAM GIRLS
MARCUS: Dave, you’re a premiership winning assistant coach. On behalf of Jonty and I, a huge congratulations – we know how hard you’ve worked over the years and how invested you and your family have been, and it’s wonderful to see you guys get the success you’ve craved. Can you talk us through the emotions of yesterday and your major reflections on the achievements?
DAVE: We warned the girls that grand finals throw up all sorts of things that you don’t expect, and in the game beforehand, a girl copped a nasty injury that forced a 20-minute pause, and delayed the start of our game, which got them a bit more anxious. Going back, there are only 10 players that played in the losing grand final last year, there was a really high turnover of players. Rick Stalker, the senior coach, always says that there are only two things that he’s good at; driving trucks and coaching football teams. What he’s done with those girls is bring them together as a team. He’s got this saying ‘stink of team’, and when you watch those girls do something simple like run a lap at training, they’re so tight together that you could almost fit them all on a beer coaster. That’s all down to Rick and his ethos and on Sunday they needed that because after 30 seconds, Healesville kicked a goal kicking with the breeze, and we had a moment where we caught eyes and said ‘nope, not today’. It was a kick that bounced at right angles and somehow went through the goals. Beyond that, the girls played probably their best quarter of footy after conceding that early goal, leading by eight points at quarter time despite kicking against the breeze, and from there they gradually pulled away. Beating Healesville was a bit of a stumbling block for Pakenham over the years – they’d only kicked one goal against them in their history as a football club, it seemed like an unattainable achievement to actually knock them off. But through hard work, Rick got the girls to a stage where they played Healesville five times and beat them on four occasions this year. We’ve got girls across the age spectrum, from a grandma to just-turned 16-year-olds. But as Rick says, ‘they’re not girls, they’re not boys, they’re footballers’, and that’s the way he treats them, just like any other side he’s coached in men’s footy over the years. Personally, my daughter Chloe, she ran out for the team’s first game back in 2018 and has played 85 of the 88 games since, and she’s the only one from that first game still there. To see her up there holding the cup up as captain was pretty special. I could go on forever, but they were simply a great team, well coached, and came together to achieve something special.
JONTY: We often hear about the ‘bottom six’ players in teams winning premierships. Do you feel like your bottom six is really strong this year?
DAVE: Last year we had a much larger bottom group but this year we’ve probably got three or four girls who don’t get much of the footy; but know they can still play an important role in the team. We’ve gone from having so many weaknesses, but now every girl knows their role and is happy to sacrifice for the betterment of the team.
BACK TO BACK
MARCUS: We’ve seen a team close to both of your boys’ respective hearts in Collingwood not able to scale the mountain this year in winning back-to-back flags. Geelong did the same the previous year with both missing finals, and no team has been able to do it since Richmond in 2019/20. What do you think makes winning flags in consecutive years so difficult?
JONTY: I think it’s the expectation and clichés around ‘you’ve done it once, can you do it again?’ that can seep in. I remember hearing after Geelong’s premiership that Jeremy Cameron said people’s support of you and wanting to shout you meals or a beer all the time makes it really hard to have a big pre-season and back up. When you’re talking such miniscule percentages and margins, even in local footy, it makes it so hard to go again. I guess it’s one of those existential questions like we spoke about last week that no one knows the answers to.
DAVE: Less than 24 hours after winning with the Pakenham women yesterday, there’s a sense of achievement and fulfilment; I don’t know what next year looks like or how hungry the girls are going to be when they come back. They’ve been chasing this one goal for so long, now that they’ve got it, how does that impact their psyche? Right now, the last thing I want to speak about is next year. I can already sense that it’s going to be a challenge, and then I had a think about it this morning when I woke up, ‘how the hell did Hawthorn win three in a row? How do you do that at the elite level and keep rising to the challenge? To reset and go again, it’s hard to know what you’re actually chasing now. It’s a great feeling to win, but really weird when you turn your thoughts to next year.
JONTY: You’ve got a target on your back now too, increasing the difficulty.
MARCUS: Pat Riley, who’s a famous name in NBA circles as a former player, coach and current administrator, coined the phrase ‘the disease of more’, which suggests that players who have experienced success have a real battle managing their egos going forward, and lose sight of what’s best for the team. They might want a bigger role on the team, more money, more prominence, all that sort of stuff, and he said that it often leads to the downfall of dynasties. On the local front, can we see any teams scaling the mountain again in 2025?
DAVE: Inverloch-Kongwak snuck home yesterday in an elimination final and just got over the line against Tooradin. For them, I don’t think it’s a motivational issue, I’ve really admired the way they’ve gone about it this year. Their two best players, in Will Hams and Paul Pattison have been out for large chunks of the season, and when you take your two best midfielders out of any team, you’re going to get hurt. Without those two, I doubt whether they can win the flag and it’s not because of expectations, they’ve just been hit by key injuries.
JONTY: It’s hard to know about Cheltenham in the Southern Football Netball League, having not covered them too closely, but they went undefeated this year and added former St Kilda player Jack Lonie. But the fact that Cranbourne has made the finals will send a genuine shudder down the spines of Cheltenham, because they’re the only team to have beaten them in the last three years, and the only team that looked like beating them in both games this year. If Cranbourne has any opportunity of somehow finding a way through and beating Cheltenham, then maybe, but otherwise I think Cheltenham should win it.
MARCUS: Finishing third is going to make things really really tough for Wandin. They’re going to have to do it the hard way again. They did do it last year but as we spoke about earlier, there’s the motivational aspect from 2023 that can’t be replicated. They hadn’t had success for a few years and came off a close preliminary final loss the year before. I’m not saying the motivation has dropped now, but you can’t replace the hunger of when you haven’t won one before; just like Dave and the girls. I’d say Narre Warren is favourites going into September and they’ve got the redemption storyline, having fallen apart on grand final day, but if they were to meet in another grand final it would be a toss of the coin, in my view. The interesting one to watch will be Narre Warren in A-Grade netball. They finished top of the ladder with two losses but they both came against Mt Evelyn, which finished second, and got the chocolates against the Magpies again on Saturday. They’re now primed for two meetings in September to determine the premiership.
DAVE: Now that you mention netball, it would be remiss of me not to mention the Inverloch Netball team – they’re going for a three-peat of flags and have won 40 games on the trot. How they keep their motivation levels at such a high mark makes for a really good story in the next couple of weeks.
MARCUS: Three premierships in a row, that’s remarkable. Thanks again for the chat boys, and congratulations once more to the Pakenham women’s team.
