EFNL 2025: Noble Park upsets Rowville to bolt into Premier Division finals race

As Noble Park coach Steve Hughes admits: “I was tearing my hair out at quarter-time”. What followed was a boilover to bring the Bulls back to the brink of the top five.

EFNL 2025: Noble Park celebrates its upset of Rowville. Picture: Sara Wilkosz

As Noble Park coach Steve Hughes admits: “I was tearing my hair out at quarter-time”.

“The amount of times we gave the ball directly back to the opposition,” he quipped, as his side fell 19 points adrift at the first and half-time breaks.

What followed was an upset of one of the Premier Division’s in-form teams, knocking over Rowville 9.11 (65) to 8.8 (56) – and coming from 15 points down at the final change.

“In my opinion we were actually very lucky at quarter-time – Rowville, in fairness, were missing a few good players and I think if we had played that way with Rowville at their best, we would’ve been in deep trouble,” Hughes said.

With improved ball-use after quarter-time, the coach said his charges got to work on chipping away at a Rowville outfit which had handed ladder-leader East Ringwood its first loss of the season the previous round.

Hughes said it was a “feather in the cap” of his midfield to contain the Hawks’ engine room featuring stars Anthony Brolic and Lachlan McDonald.

“Mitch Riordan’s second half was super, Lachie McDonnell was really good again … down back I thought Jacob Noble and the Ariek Lual were super,” he said.

“Even that last quarter we denied them scoring opportunities – it was pleasing to hit the front at the right time.

“We’re in some good, strong competitive form at the moment.”

Noble Park (sixth) now sits a mere five per cent out of the top five, after improving its record to 5-5.

Just four points also separates it from Rowville (fourth).

Hughes said he was “proud of the spirit” his emerging group had shown this season.

“I’ve said a number of times, there’s no game this year the boys have played where the boys haven’t had a good crack at it,” he said.

“The endeavour and effort and playing for each other, there’s a lot of that at the moment.”

A galaxy of stars assembled at the Pat Wright Snr Oval on Saturday to toast the 40th anniversary of the club’s 1985 premiership.

Hughes said the pre-game address to the players was “special”.

“We went through the last 40 years of the footy club,” he said.

“We had David Spence who was coach of the 1985 premiership side, Glenn Gunstone who played in that game to chat about the ‘80s, Peter Reece was fantastic who came in for the ‘90s, Denis Knight, ’03 and ’04 premiership coach, he had a chat about the early 2000s, and then Glenn ‘Chucky’ Manson talked about 2010 and 2011 (premierships).

“I loved the fact that 22 players that didn’t know some of those stories now do.”

Noble Park is away to Berwick in Round 11, which upset top-five outfit Doncaster East by a point on Saturday.