Tara Murray
Altona captain Steven Kennedy has gone out on top, with a premiership the icing on a successful football career.
One of two players from the Vikings 2012 Western Region Football League division 1 premiership in Saturday’s premiership team, Kennedy said the time was right to hang up the boots.
“I’m retiring after this one,” he said post game. “I’m done, I’m 33-years-old and that will do.
“It’s absolutely amazing, it’s 10 years between drinks for me [at Altona] and a lot of hard work over the last few years with COVID.”
Kennedy said for much of the year the group didn’t look like they would be premiers. He said they just found the right mix at the right time of the year.
“We had a lot of injuries during the year and we didn’t look like the best side because of Caroline Springs,” he said.
“We were just lucky we got all our boys back at the right time of the year come finals, it all worked out for us.”
Kennedy said personally it had been a challenging year for him, but he was glad that he stuck around after two years cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said the two premierships with the Vikings were very different.
“There’s different feelings,” he said. “The first one was a one point game, so it was decided right on the siren.
“This one we probably had wrapped up with about 10 minutes to go. I thought we had dominance for almost 90 per cent of the game, but we couldn’t captialise on the scoreboard.
“We kept hitting the scoreboard, we kept kicking points 10.21… We just had to stick at it and grind it out.”
Kennedy said this one was also special being captain of the side.
Kennedy retires with a playing resume that puts most people to shame.
He’s a two-time premiership player at Altona and won the Barry Priest Medal for the best player in the WRFL division 1 competition in 2018.
Kennedy also had a couple of stints at Darley in the Ballarat Football League. There he was part of the Devils premiership in 2015.
That same year he won the Henderson Medal as the competition’s best player.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” Kennedy said of his career.
“Four grand finals for three premierships, I’ll take that one every day of the week. I would have taken one premiership.”
Kennedy said he hadn’t thought about coaching. He said he was likely to have a year off and go from there.
