“Interleague footy, it’s alive and well”.
That was one of the main takeaways from Goulburn Valley League coach Mark Lambourn following his side’s narrow seven-point defeat to Ovens and Murray League in an extraordinary Ash-Wilson Trophy clash.
The see-sawing, momentum-swaying contest had the small crowd at Albury Sports Ground in a frenzy as the visitors almost pulled off a shock win on Saturday.
Given little chance before the match, the GV contingent rallied from 35 points down at quarter time to grab a hold of the lead by 15 points early in the final term before letting it slip.
The last quarter was a pulsating and captivating 30 minutes of footy, one with a finals-like atmosphere that felt like it had more on the line than just bragging rights.
Much has been said about interleague footy being on life support and Lambourn hoped that Saturday was the defibrillation to shock it back to life.
“I think so and I still think we can get much better at it,” he said.
“In the whole aspect of our selection process, our training aspect and everything like that.
“For the boys to play the way they did and show the level of effort towards each other and the camaraderie ... it’s a miracle they’ve done what they’ve done.
“We’ll look at the whole process and review everything because if you’re not, then you’re not continuing to get better.
“So what can we do better? How do we get better? How do we get players to commit? But it’s been great, it’s been a great experience.”
One aspect Lambourn said may be a focus going forward was targeting the competition’s young guns.
On Saturday we saw tomorrow’s stars become today’s heroes with Echuca’s Jack Evans, Aiden Mills, Mansfield’s Ben Christopher and Harry Mahoney, Seymour’s Riley Mason and Mooroopna’s Dom Gugliotti all perform strongly.
“I think our average age was around 23.2 and that’s what we need to really focus on, is that youth and encouraging those boys to play,” Lambourn said.
“Absolutely more buy-in. We want them to look at this and go ‘this is fun, this a great concept’.
“They’ll only ever play one game like this together, but in 10 years time they’ll bump into each other and they’ll still talk about this.
“They will walk away with great memories.”