NOT much has changed from the home-and-away rounds to the first mission of the Western Region Football League division 2 finals for the all-conquering Yarraville-Seddon Eagles.
The Eagles went through the regular season undefeated and continued on their merry way with a 46-point second semi-final win over Parkside at Crofts Reserve on Saturday.
Eagles coach David Connell said it was a relief to get the first one out of the way in the finals and move directly into Sunday week’s grand final.
“The weight of being undefeated, you don’t know how the playing group is going to handle that pressure.
“We were relatively confident that we’ve got enough experience in the group that they could handle it well and were really pleased with the way they played today.”
The question has to be asked: is one game in 28 days sufficient preparation for a grand final? The Eagles will be lacking match practice, having run out just once since their round 18 meeting with West Footscray on August 11. They also have a 13-day break between the semi-final and grand final.
Connell, who went through last year’s finals series as coach of Albanvale on the flipside of having to play four tough finals matches before meeting Deer Park
in the decider, preferences the lighter workload.
“I’d take this any day of the week,” he said. “Last year when we won the preliminary final at Albanvale, we were just dead on our feet and had nothing left to give after three hard finals. What this allows you to do is keep training them really hard because you don’t have to worry about them getting up the next week and it allows the guys to get that continued run in their legs during the week.”
Connell did his homework on the Magpies and noticed an increase in their leg speed since they last met. He made the tough call to drop four regular first team players to the reserves in a reactionary move.
“They have definitely changed the way they played from the first time we played them to this week,” he said.
“We made four changes this week and a couple of them were based around how we thought they have changed over the past month, in particular with their midfield rotations. We brought in a few blokes who had a bit more leg speed and were fitter so we could spread them a bit more.”
What remained the same was the Eagles’ dominance over the Magpies this season. They were in control from the get-go and increased the lead gradually the longer the game wore on. One of the keys for the
Eagles was to detonate the threat of Magpies’ strong-marking forward Fabiano Mastropasqua, who needed to kick a bag for his side to win without goal machine Mo Khartabil in the line-up.
Alex Garvin was entrusted with the responsibility and wore him like a glove.
“We put a fair bit of time into ‘Fab’ and to hold him goalless was a great effort,” Connell said. “It went some way to us controlling the game and keeping them to five goals for the whole game.”
The Eagles had a dominant centre line with Andy Willis, Beau Guest and Jason Harmes prominent.
The tireless work of Willis was the best feature in the eyes of Connell – “his work rate is phenomenal”.
The Eagles will not rest until they have a first senior premiership in the bag since the merger of Yarraville and Seddon football clubs in 2007.
Demonstrating the commitment of the players, straight after Saturday’s win they made a beeline from Blackshaws Road to the Williamstown beach for a recovery session. “It shows the professionalism of the group,” Connell said. “That’s how focused and fixated they are on winning a flag.”
