Lancefield heads into the Riddell District Football League off season feeling it’s on the right track after one of its biggest wins in years to end the season..
With just one for the season, not many people gave the Tigers much hope of knocking off Diggers Rest in the battle between top and bottom in the final round.
The Tigers though left everyone stunned to pull off an 11.5 (71)-9.14 (68) win.
Tigers coach Ryan O’Meara said it was nice to finish off the season the right way.
“It was a great result for the boys and a bit of a reward for effort,” he said. “It’s been tough and we didn’t deserve to be a 1-14 team at that stage.
“No one was expecting us to be 2-14 after beating Diggers Rest. We had been really disappointing in round 17 and wanted to rebound and finish the year off strongly.”
O’Meara said people around the club were saying they hadn’t beaten the Burras since 2013 with the Burras having had their measure.
It was an 100-plus margin earlier in the year.
He highlighted the side’s win against Riddell a couple of years ago as the last time they’d won a match like that.
“It’s a great result for the boys and it’s a long time coming.”
O’Meara said they had focused on making training fun in the lead up to the match.
He said while you always go into a game hoping that you can win, it wasn’t a result they were expecting.
“It’s good for a young team,” he said. “It’s a good launching pad for next season.
“It shows that we’re good enough to make it with the top sides, we just haven’t been able to do it for long enough.”
The win was enough to move the Tigers off the bottom of the ladder.
The two wins is an improvement on last season when they failed to win a game.
While this season has just finished, the Tigers are already looking ahead to next season and taking further steps forward.
“We had a good core group of players sign on,” O’Meara said. “There will hopefully be a couple more this week.
“It all points to pretty positive signs.”
Among the re-signings announced by the Tigers so far include Riley O’Meara, Noah Smallacombe, Tom Sayers and Tom Indian.
O’Meara said they would look to bring in some experience in the off season to add to the squad they already had.
“We’ve got everyone moving in the right direction,” he said. “Experience is what we need to make that step up.
“We have an average age of 21 with multiple 17, 18-year-olds running around.
“Our captain turned 24 this year. If we can grab a couple of 28-plus older players it would be good.
“That is what we’re lacking.”
