The Murray Bombers have done it again.
Recent victories over Nathalia and Shepparton United secured Echuca the Northern Country Women’s League minor premiership for a third straight year.
The Murray Bombers capped off an untarnished home-and-away season with a 70-point win over the Demons as Paige Baksh ran rampant down forward with eight goals.
Although Echuca will sit on the pine in the final round, they will watch on three games clear of second-placed Nathalia, a side they dispatched of by 95 points in round 10.
With an eye-watering percentage of 1027.78 and just 90 points conceded for the entire season, Echuca is once again the front-runner for premiership glory.
However, Echuca has seen this movie before.
Despite sitting in a similar position this time last year, a heartbreaking grand final defeat to the Purples in 2021 consigned Echuca to consecutive grand final losses after a shock 18-point defeat to Mooroopna.
It’s the silverware that has eluded one of the more dominant women’s football teams in recent times, but Murray Bombers’ coach Damien Dalziel said expectations would not hinder his side as it embarked on another finals series in two weeks time.
“It’s a lot more relaxed,” Dalziel said.
“I was fairly finals driven last year, because we had a lot of good footballers in our side and I probably got a bit caught up in the hype around the place.
“We’ve dropped all that right off and we’re not thinking about anything beyond the game we’re playing.
“Once we find out who and where we’re playing, we’ll work on what we need to do.”
Echuca brought a relatively inexperienced squad into the 2022 season, making such a dominant season even more impressive with about a quarter of the squad having not played previously.
“There’s a lot of girls who haven’t played footy before,” Dalziel said.
“Most of the girls are excited for what happens over the next couple of weeks; it’s new to a fair few of them.
“Hopefully we can keep going the way we are and take our full line-up into the first final.”
Against United, Echuca took just 17 players into the rain-affected clash with illness sweeping through the squad, but nonetheless ran away with a 13.12 (90) to 3.2 (20) victory.
Baksh, Kyra Naismith, Ellie Wright, and Jacquie James were prominent all day for Echuca.
The Murray Bombers got away to a fast start, firing off five goals in the first quarter.
“We always pride ourselves on our first quarters to set the game up,” Dalziel said.
“The game was no different, and it was good to get through largely injury free.
“We’ll have a week off and find out who we play in the first final.”
With one round to play, the NCWL top four looks set.
Based on the finals fixtures of previous seasons, Echuca look poised to face United in a preliminary final, while Nathalia and Benalla will do battle in the second versus third final.
Confirmation of those fixtures or finals venues are yet to be confirmed.