The Narooma Lions capped off a fantastic season with a dominant win over the Merimbula Diggers in Saturday’s Sapphire Coast AFL grand final at Bill Smyth Oval.
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The Lions finished the season on a 14-game winning streak, and only lost one game to the Diggers in their first match of the season.
The match started in horrendous conditions, as strong winds and high temperatures made the going very tough for the players.
The Lions had the wind at their backs in the opening term, but struggled to read the ball in the air for the first 10 minutes.
The Diggers matched them in the contest around the ball, but couldn’t get achieve any fluency with their ball use thanks to the strong winds.
Narooma eventually kicked away, but a quarter-time score of 4.3 (27) to 0.0 (0) seemed small considering the strength of the wind.
That fact was driven home early in the second quarter, as the Diggers kicked two quick goals to get themselves right back into the contest.
Narooma tightened up from that point, and started controlling play despite the disadvantage of the wind. They kicked three goals in the term, including a great goal from coach Jason Sauiluma, to lead by 30 points at the main break.
The wind died down at half time, giving both sides a chance to play a more natural style of footy rather than the territorial game seen in the first half.
Both sides still found scoring hard to come by in the third quarter though, as players were still adjusting to the new conditions.
Jai Reed and Simon Mackie took control for the Lions in the latter stages of the quarter, each kicking a big goal to help the Lions build their lead out to 37 points at the final change.
Merimbula weren’t going to go down without a fight in the last quarter, as Daniel Edwards started getting his hands on the footy in the forward 50.
He kicked the first goal of the term, and when Jay Richmond kicked truly just three minutes later, the Diggers were within 23 points. They possibly should have been closer, but a number of easy missed opportunities in front of goal would cruel their chances of a famous comeback.
The Lions steadied after the Diggers early onslaught, and eventually got the margin back out to 30 points through Jai Reed.
Celebrations started both on the bench and in the crowd with five minutes left on the clock, and they reached a fever pitch when Zac Martin kicked the sealer to make the result a certainty.
The final siren sounded with the ball on the wing, breaking what was the longest active premiership drought in the competition as the Lions won 13.6 (84) to 6.9 (45).
Jai Reed was named best-on-field in the post-game presentation, as he kicked three important goals and provided an important forward target all day. Clifford Taylor also kicked three goals in the win.
Lions’ coach Jason Sauiluma said the premiership was outstanding considering where the club was a few years ago.
“This is a big reward for a lot of people at the club who have put in a lot of effort,” he said. “A couple of years ago, the club was bankrupt and we had no players, and there were a few that hung around, stuck through the tough times, and put in the hard work required to rebuild the club.”
Sauiluma said he would be telling this story for years to come, and was proud of the improvement the team showed throughout the season.
“Anyone that wants to listen, and even people that don’t want to listen, they’ll be hearing about this,” he said. “People will ask me how I’m going, and I’ll respond by saying ‘I won a flag, broke a big drought, and it was mad’.
“It’s awesome to go down in history as the coach who broke the drought. We had a gun side to work with, and there we no egos in the team, which made them all really easy to coach.
“I was pretty happy to see how we improved this year. The first round of games we won by a couple of kicks, then we started blowing teams out by 100 points towards the end of the year.
“It was very pleasing to see that building the players up through training was working, and we timed our run to perfection.”
The Lions will now look to recruit for season 2019, especially in the forward line as they are losing top goal-kickers Simon Mackie and Jai Reed.
“It’s going to hurt losing our two highest goal kickers from this season,” Sauiluma said. “We’ll look to start recruiting as early as next week, and it’s always a little easier coming off a flag.”