BEACONSFIELD coach Scott Mather was awarded the Bill Williamson Medal for best and fairest in the Casey Cardinia League reserves after a horrible administrative mistake last week.
However, the veteran midfielder-forward will not be concerned with individual honours this weekend.
Mather polled 14 votes and ran second to DEVON MEADOWS player Tommy Hayes (16), before it turned out that Hayes had been suspended during the year and was ineligible.
Mather, 37, who had a long senior career with KEYSBOROUGH, will lead the Eagles seconds onto the field in search of the 2009 premiership this Saturday and that’s the only medal he’ll be after.
Word is Mather will be presented with his medal after the grand final.
WE haven’t even ended the 2009 season yet, but the ‘silly season’ has already arrived it seems.
One ripper that passed over the Footy Shorts desk last week was the possibility of ST KILDA goalsneak Stephen Milne returning to HAMPTON PARK next year.
Our source suggested that, providing the Saints won their long-awaited flag in a fortnight, Milne would retire from the big league and return to the Redbacks where he played his junior football.
Please let it be so!
WONTHAGGI POWER has finally agreed to enter the West Gippsland Latrobe Football League, ending its long and bitter battle to stay in the Alberton Football League after it was voted out almost two years ago.
That will boost the WGLFL to nine clubs again, balancing out the likely departure of GARFIELD to the EDFL next year.
EDFL delegates are to officially meet this week and decide whether to accept the Stars’ application to join and the feeling among many is to accept them.
However, if that doesn’t happen, the word from Garfield is that the senior club will have to go into recess because it cannot survive another year like it had in 2009.
AFTER its first flag in 50 years the NILMA-DARNUM clubrooms were rocking on Saturday night with more than 300 people present.
The crowd’s thirst saw the beer run out early and an extra batch was sourced to get through the night.
Word has it that the boys were so pumped about their victory that they all took part in a nude run across their oval in early hours of Sunday morning.
While club president Andrew Patterson played a big part in enticing many recruits to the club he was keen to deflect all the attention for their success from himself and insisted that others in the club had played a more important role in recent years.
He singled out the likes of current vice-president Neil Hughes, who has been involved with the Darno’s for four decades, Max and Mary Knersch, Jock Maloney, Greg Murdoch and Greg and Kathy Dessent.
AND while we’re talking about celebrations, apparently the BUNYIP under-18 premiership side decided that it would aim for back-to-back flags in 2010 and started pre-season training on Sunday morning.
Very, very early on Sunday morning and, again, without the assistance of any clothing so we are reliably informed.
What is it about nude football after a premiership?
WESTERN BULLDOG defender Brian Lake organised for his partner to give birth to their first child early to avoid clashing with his finals commitments, but DOVETON captain Justin Hill will not be following suit.
Hill is due to become a father this week but said, after Sunday’s preliminary final win, that if his partner goes into labour on Saturday, the Doves would have to win the flag without him.
And he has stuck to that all year, saying during pre-season that football was not even close in importance to being present for the birth.
GOOD to see former ROC utility Kable Dowsett is making a steady recovery from cancer after extended chemotherapy.
Dowsett was at CORA LYNN on Saturday to support his younger brother Lee, who played in the Cobra’s reserves against NAR NAR GOON.
Unfortunately for Lee, he was dropped to the reserves after he played in the senior second semi-final against NILMA DARNUM. Kable said his brother’s demotion was something he could relate to, for despite having a good career he too was also omitted from ROC’s 2002 grand final team after playing in the senior team in the second semi-final.
Unfortunately for Lee, the Cobras went down in both the seniors and the reserves on Saturday.
PAKENHAM has been allocated the away rooms at its home ground on Saturday after the MPNFL followed suit with the neighbouring EDFL, which did the same thing last weekend.
Grand-final host CORA LYNN was represented in both the seniors and reserves on the big day, but both sides played out of the away rooms to even up the perceived home-ground advantage.
While it is obviously not the deciding factor, the MPNFL decided to address the perception and the Lions will attempt to win their first flag since 2002 from the smaller changerooms at the Toomuc Reserve.
THE EDFL goalkicking table ended in a three-way tie between CATANI’s Luke James, CORA LYNN’s Darren Sheen and NILMA-DARNUM’s Kael Bergles, with 98 goals.
While James could not add to his tally, after Catani was eliminated in the preliminary final, Bergles notched three goals on Saturday, but Sheen kicked poorly and could only muster one goal.
When their performances are trimmed to the bones, Sheen had the best goal average per game having only played 17 games this season, while James played 19 and Bergles ran onto the field 20 times.
The 21-year-old Bergles is a real talent and intends to give the VFL a crack next season and will start training over summer with the CASEY SCORPIONS.
And word has it that PORT ADELAIDE has also expressed quite a bit of interest in his ability.
CRICKET will come between CRANBOURNE and a couple of its best senior players next season, with Troy Aust and Daniel Watson intending to travel overseas to pursue the sport.
Both will make their way to England to play county or district cricket over the northern summer months and miss the majority of the 2010 season.
Watson, in particular, will be hard to replace because good, solid full-backs are hard to find.
Eagles officials are banking on a combination of home sickness and a string of ducks to bring the lads back early.
THE cost of policing at BERWICK compared to Frankston Park on the weekend would have made for an interesting comparison.
It seemed that every second person at the Edwin Flack Reserve was either a uniformed police officer or one of those sneaky plain-clothed members (that were about as inconspicuous as a pushbike in a V8 race), just itching for something other than football to happen.
Compare that with the total of five officers at Frankston Park for the Nepean League grand final, who combined with local security staff, blended into the background on a day that saw no incidents.
One witty MPNFL source said it was a case of confrontation versus control.
BEACONSFIELD will hold a meet-the-coach day at the Perc Allison Oval at noon on Sunday.
New mentor Austinn Jones will announce his assistants and map out his pre-season plans and expectations for the 2010 season.
A new slogan for the coming season will also be unveiled at the event and all players and members are invited to attend.
NEERIM NEERIM SOUTH fourths’ coach Peter Brooks said he was proud of his boys after their thrilling victory over CATANI on Saturday.
More so, he said because his team had devoted the match to club stalwart Bill Cumming, who passed away during the season.
“We did it for Bill,” he said after the match. “He was such a great man, a life member of the club, the heart and soul of our club.”
THE Gippsland Umpires Association hosted its annual life member’s dinner last Thursday night and it was another successful and well-attended event.
Some of the other highlights of the night included the presentation of a life membership to field umpire David Nash. Nash has been involved with the GUA for more than 15 years, has officiated in more than 200 senior games and was a former president.
Built more for comfort rather than speed he brought some laughter to the audience with his self-effacing comment that he only took up umpiring because he ‘figured it was the cheapest way I could lose weight.’
The other highlight of the night was the announcement of the Ray Barwick Memorial Award presented to promising young boundary umpire Sam Piasente in only his second year in the umpiring ranks.
Steve Pratt, the recruitment and retention officer, said he was pleased with the uptake into the ranks during the season that saw six new boundary, 16 new field and six goal umpires.
The night ended on a high with GUA legend Vic Henderson, now 90 years of age, singing the umpires ‘anthem’ in partnership with popular club stalwart Martin Chmielewski.
