Tara Murray
A remarkable few years for South Morang has continued with the club winning the Northern Football League division 2 premiership on Saturday.
Just two years ago, the club was celebrating finally breaking through in division 3 after a number of near misses.
It only took two attempts in division 2, before the club added just its third premiership to the cabinet and the first at this level.
It means they will be in division 1 next season.
Speaking the morning after the grand final, Lions coach Gary Hall said it still hadn’t sunk in what they had done.
“It’s a dream at the minute,” she said. “All the efforts by a lot of people to get to this point.
“The hardest thing about division 3 is getting out of it. Then those years of Covid held us back a little bit.
“It gave the boys time to mature and grow as a footy club, the result was yesterday [Saturday].
“We’ll probably get a reality check when we line up against Heidelberg in round one or something next year.”
On Saturday, the match went down to the wire like the Lions previous two finals. The first final between South Morang and Diamond Creek went to extra time.
This one, the Lions were able to hold on to win, 10.5 (65)-8.11 (59) at Preston City Oval.
Hall said the game was played in tough conditions.
“It was fairly windy to one end of the ground and it was so slippery,” he said. “It was always going to be an arm wrestle.
“You go back to the three games that we’ve played during the year, it’s been the same. I think we had a 10 minute patch in the third quarter when we kicked a few and that’s probably what won us the game really.”
The Lions led by seven points at quarter time and six points at the main break with it anyone’s game.
Neither team kicked a goal for the first 22 minutes of the third quarter before the Lions kicked four quick ones to lead by 31 points at the final change.
Hall said the message at the last break was to make sure that they held their nerves and don’t panic.
“Just control the game,” he said. “Don’t do things that you don’t need to do and if you hang on you have just created history.
“They were all geed up with the reserves winning again as well. They came at us hard in the end, the boys to their credit held their nerve and hung on again.”
Hall said the grand final experience of the past few years had also helped them late.
The Lions kicked the first goal of the last quarter before Diamond Creek kicked the next five to get within a goal.
It would be too late and the Lions held on to create history.
Nathan Stefanile was awarded the best on ground medal. It was special for the big man who missed the Lions division 3 premiership in 2022 through suspension.
Hall said he was rapt to Stefanile and said it was perfect conditions for him.
Tye Hall and Joshua D’Intinosante were other standouts.
D’Intinosante finished with four goals and Tye Hall with two goals.
Gary Hall said those guys can play well in any conditions and they lead by example.
Hall said that the Sunday would likely involve watching the replays of both the seniors and reserves wins amongst the celebrations.
He said they would have a weeks break before starting thinking about next year and being in division 1 for the first time.
Meanwhile, Tye Hall, James Traianou and Mitchell Kalpakis were named in the division 2 team of the year.
Whittlesea’s Mitchell Andrews, Jaron Murphy, Xavier Dimasi and Taidgh Bland were also named in the team of the year along with Thomastown’s Youseph Dib and James Lucente and Laurimar’s Joel Lawson.
