Tara Murray
The rise of Craigieburn City has continued with the club earning promotion into FV state league 2 north-west for next season.
Craigieburn first formed a senior team for the 2016 season and has quickly risen up the ranks since.
It won the state league 5 north title in 2017 and 12 months later finished second in the higher division to earn promotion into state league 3 north west.
On Saturday, the side finished the state league 3 north-west season with a win to give it a chance to finish second and seal promotion.
After beating the Sebastopol Vikings, 4-1, Craigieburn received the news that Williamstown had a final round draw, which was enough for them to jump them.
Craigieburn coach Michael Loche, who has coached the senior side from the start, said it was pretty incredible what they had achieved.
“It’s pretty surreal,” he said. “It has not sunk in yet and it will take a few weeks for it to set in.
“I’m immensely proud of the players, the support staff, the club and everyone. We’re not the most talented group, but you won’t find a group with a bigger heart.”
Having lost in the second last round, Craigieburn entered the final round knowing that its fate was partly out of its hands.
Loche said for them they just wanted to get the win and do everything they could to be in the position to be promoted.
“Part of it was out of our hands,” he said. “We looked at what we could control and my biggest fear was that the other result would go our way and we didn’t win.
“We wanted to put out a really good performance, win, lose or draw. We didn’t want to lose as we wanted to complete an unbeaten season at home, that was an important milestone we wanted to tick off.
“We put our best foot forward and wanted to have no regrets.”
Loche said he was thrilled with how they played and only had to wait a couple of minutes after their game to hear the news they had done enough.
Loche said the fact the club would be now in state league 2 next season was massive, especially considering the club is about 10 years old.
“It’s great news for the club to go from state 5, 4, 3 and now to 2. It has not sunk in,” he said.
“The club has a good junior base and state league 2 is a pretty good standard of football.”
Loche said they would look to celebrate the win and relax a bit before looking ahead to next season.
“We’ll reinvigorate and come back bigger and better and put our best foot forward in state league 2.
“Every time we’ve been challenged the group has stood up.”
