Wyndhamvale has broken its long-standing senior premiership drought with a 49-point win over West Footscray in the Western Region Football League division 2 grand final at Avalon Airport Oval on Sunday.
After a controlled but nervy opening three quarters, the Falcons opened the floodgates with a six-goals-to-nil last quarter that sparked wild celebrations from the green and gold section of the crowd.
Moments after the grand final, the Falcons confirmed they will be sitting down with league powerbrokers in the coming weeks to confirm their promotion to division 1 for the first time in club history.
“We’ll be going up,” Falcons football manager Nathan Evans told Star Weekly. “We’ve got to sit down with the league and talk about the finer details of it all, but we’re extremely keen to go up to division 1.
“We’ve been training our guys to get the mentality we’re a division 1 club, but just at the moment we’re in division 2.
“We had the mantra many years ago of basically creating an environment where we can have sustained success.”
VIEW PICTURE GALLERY/SALES FROM THIS MATCH
Wyndhamvale had its nose in front all day but it was not until the fourth quarter that it had a semblance of comfort about the situation.
The Falcons pressed forward at the start of the last term with Tito Nyawela finally making their time-in-forward-half dominance count on the scoreboard with a goal that took the margin out to 21 points.
It would be the start of a charge of six unanswered goals, including three of spearhead Paul O’Shea’s five of the match.
The Falcons had the chance to really lap up the moment, while a disconsolate West Footscray knew they had thrown their last significant blow a quarter earlier when they had got as close a seven points after trailing by 19 at half time.
“Watching the players on the field, you could see they really did enjoy it,” Evans said. “They celebrated hard after goals and the backline was really getting around each other.
“That carried over to the celebrations straight after the game.”
The Falcons had no weak links.
There were 22 contributors on the day and every single one of them will go down as legends of the club as its first senior premiership winners.
Noa Fonua embodied the Falcons endeavour on this day on his way to the Rex Swann Medal for best on ground.
You simply did not stand in his way if you were a Rooster.
“He’s a bull,” Evans said. “He’s see ball, get ball, just runs straight through anyone who stands in his way.
“He was hellbent today on running the legs off his opponent and making them earn it every time they got it.
“He’s an important key to our side and has been for the last year or two, he’s only young and has got a big future ahead of him.”
Devan Ellis had a similar impact in the midfield.
The tough-as-nails centreman underlined why he was named captain of the division 2 team of the year.
“He’s probably the number one onballer in the league,” Evans said.
“He’s just head over the footy, you cannot break any of his tackles, he always gets his hands free, always stands up in tackles.
“We’re rapt to have him at the club.”
O’Shea, once listed with the Western Bulldogs, ended the game with five goals, but missed out on an even bigger haul with his wayward kicking for goal earlier in the game.
With 56 goals for the season, the 26-year-old stamped himself as the premier key forward in the division, but his importance to the club is not only measured on the scoreboard.
“People don’t understand, you’re in the AFL system for a few years, it sort of bleeds you a little bit for the passion to play, so when he came to
Wyndhamvale it was about getting back and having fun with the boys and just enjoying himself,” Evans said.
“We reap the benefits of it as a local club because he’s not only one of the spearheads of the comp and a leader on the field, but off the field he parties like the best of them, loves a laugh and loves a joke and he’s a pest, but we wouldn’t have him any other way.”
The Falcons built one of the most miserly defences in the competition under first year coach Troy Beamond.
They held the Roosters to just 15 scoring shots, largely to do with the work of Mitch Gough keeping Roosters focal point Damian Yze to two goals and
Tyler Tessari holding down Rhys Bucktin on this day.
The drive out of the backline of Luke Dennerley and James Damjanovski was important.
Nyawela, Aaron Molivas, Todd Lawrie and Nathan Bisset were dangerous in attack with two goals apiece.
The Falcons, featuring in their first senior grand final since 1994, celebrated long and hard into Sunday night and there were no signs of it slowing down as the sun came up on Monday.
“Amazing mate, absolutely amazing,” Evans said of the feeling of breaking through for a premiership. “It was always the bridemaids feeling, four or five prelims in a row, so it was good to take that next step.
“We knew our list was good, we’ve never done any drastic changes to the players we’ve got, we backed them in for both seniors and reserves and the kids coming up, it was just a matter of sticking to what we thought we knew was right and slowly bringing it up.
“We were the right way about it and now hopefully we’re ready to go up to division 1 and be a competitive unit up there.”
Grand final scoreboard
Division 2 seniors
Wyndhamvale 17.12 (114) d West Footscray 10.5 (65)
Wyndhamvale – Goals: P. O’Shea 5, A. Molivas, T. Lawrie, T. Nyawela, N. Bisset 2, C. Benson, K. Morrison, D. Bunworth, N. Fonua. Best: N. Fonua, T. Tessari, D. Ellis, L. Dennerley, P. O’Shea.
West Footscray – Goals: S. McAnulty, D. Yze, A. Magnabosco, D. Bicer 2, M. Kennedy, T. Lyon. Best: S. Lobb, M. Kennedy, A. Kirk, N. Burmeister, Z. Kadour, T. Lyon.
