A dozen Lancaster footballers will look to become the first since a Shepparton East team of the late 1950s to win a hat-trick of Kyabram district league premierships when the Wombats start their third successive finals campaign at Girgarre on Saturday.
There are 12 players remaining from the 2022 team that beat Murchison-Toolamba in a rain soaked grand final by 10 points, when only 11 goals were scored for the game.
Coach Tom Davies, who sat out half of last season and all of this year with a knee injury, was among those players to give the Wombats the first of two successive titles.
This is his third year at the helm, having been crowned the league’s best player back in 2021 before taking over the coaching role from now Kyabram coach Corey Carver.
This weekend Davies and his Wombats team will face an unbeaten Murchison-Toolamba team which is in the unique position to have finished the season on top of the ladder after drawing twice this season – with both Lancaster and third ranked Shepparton East.
It will be a near full-strength Lancaster team that faces Murchison-Toolamba, with the only real injury cloud over back-up ruckman Ricky Thomson.
He has played just three games this season and missed the Wombats last home-and-away game.
Lancaster goes into the finals series having lost just one game for the season, against fifth ranked Nagambie.
Between 1958-61, Shepparton East won four successive flags before departing the Kyabram district league.
They did not return to 2019 and have not managed to win a KDL title since.
No team since then has won three titles in a row, although the Wombats have come as close as any.
They finished on top of the league in 2021 before the season was cancelled due to COVID-19 and then won the next two titles.
After beating Murchison-Toolamba in 2022, they conquered Nagambie 125-60 in vastly different weather conditions last season.
From that grand final two seasons again, there are also 13 Murchison-Toolamba players who are still in the Grasshoppers colours, hoping to break the stranglehold the Wombats have had on the competition for three seasons.
In the modern era, seven teams have won back-to-back titles, including the Wombats in 1980-81, but premiership glory has been scarce for Murchison-Toolamba.
They have only four titles to their credit, the last in 2013, with a 31-year title drought before that.
Conversely, Lancaster is one of two teams, with Nagambie, to have been a dominant force in the league.
The Wombats have 11 KDL senior football titles to their credit (second only to Nagambie’s 13) in 90-odd years of competing in the league.
Shepparton East and Nagambie advanced from the first week of the finals and will now meet in the next knockout stage of the finals.
The winner of that game will face off against the loser of the Lancaster/Murchison-Toolamba game in week three of the finals.
— Stanhope’s reserve grade team has advanced to the next stage of the finals after surviving a late challenge from Shepparton East in a dour struggle that featured only eight goals.
Both teams finished the home-and-away season with 11 wins and had played only once during the season, that game won by the Lions in a 16-point result.
Stanhope led by 15 points at quarter-time, but failed to register a score in the second term and took a three-point lead into half-time.
The roles reversed and Shepparton East didn’t trouble the scorer in the third term, giving the Lions an 11-point advantage at the final break.
In the last, it was the Lions who didn’t hit the scoreboard for a second time in the game and held on to win by three points.
They will now face Avenel in another elimination game, the Swans having beaten Tallygaroopna by 85 points in a much higher scoring game.
Charlie Lloyd, who didn’t play his first game with the Lions until round eight, was best-on-ground and had support from Kian Verrall and highly decorated veteran Daryl Harrison.
Harrison has played half of the Lions games this season and showed all of his guile in the three-point victory.
Stanhope’s four goals were split between Matthew Canny and Sannon Aynsley, the latter taking his season tally to 54 with his most important majors of the year.
Josh Canny, who had played only three games for the season before the weekend, was another to shine on the big stage.
— Lancaster’s under-18 team progressed to the second week of the finals with a 15-point win against Tallygaroopna.
They will now face Shepparton East, which was a 22-point winner against Undera. The Wombats have beaten the Eagles twice during the home-and-away season and will go in full of confidence to at least have a chance at a grand final berth by earning a preliminary final appearance.
The competition’s clear best two teams, Nagambie and Violet Town, will compete for a spot in that grand final this weekend.
Lancaster’s 48-33 victory came despite a slow start where they trailed by 15 points at half-time, having kicked eight behinds from their first nine scoring shots.
After half-time, however, it was five goals to none for the Wombats and they surged home for victory.
Declan Hallett, the grandson of Wombats premiership coach of the 1980s Kelly Hewitt, kicked two goals in the win and had support from Josh Dunne.
Hallett, along with captain Thomas Withall, vice-captain Nathan Oliver and Oliver McCormick, have all played senior football with Lancaster this season.
Hallett, in fact, kicked seven goals on debut with the Wombats in round three and finished with 16 goals from five appearances at the top level.
Jonah Saddlier was the Wombats best player, with Luke Simmons, Jack Perrella and Billy Halliwell also among the top performers.
Lancaster has an abundance of finals experience, with Oliver, Dunne and Ethan Ciavarella all part of the 2022 grand final team which was beaten by Nagambie.