Sunbury completes incredible turnaround by claiming VWFL West Division premiership
NINE months after Sunbury’s VWFL side was on the brink of collapsing, it is celebrating premiership glory.
North West
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REWIND to November last year.
The future of Sunbury’s Victorian Women’s Football League side was “almost in a hole” as the Lions battled to put both a team and a committee together.
Pre-season started with about 15 players and the league had grave concerns about the club’s future.
On Sunday, just over nine months on, Sunbury celebrated premiership success.
“It’s one of those fairytales,” Lions coach Kerry Saunders said after her side’s West Division win over Melton Centrals.
“It’s come from almost nothing and that probably makes it a lot more pleasing, that we nearly didn’t have a team and didn’t have the numbers.
“In the end, we pulled up kids from nowhere but they’ve enjoyed the ride as well.”
The Lions were the best team in the competition all year.
They went through the home-and-away season unbeaten from 15 matches and finished with a sky-high percentage of 1230.10.
And when it came to the crunch on Sunday, Saunders’ side stepped up again.
Scores were level at quarter-time before Sunbury took control — at least around the ground — in the second term but kicked the only five behinds of the quarter.
The Centrals were held scoreless after quarter-time as the Lions won a low-scoring affair 3.9 (27) to 1.2 (8) at Coburg City Oval.
“It was wet weather football so whoever took their chances when they came was going to have the lead at the end of the day and we did,” Saunders said.
Simone Craige was awarded the best on ground medal, while captain Natasha Hardy was influential in her return from a broken wrist and kicked two of the side’s three goals.
Saunders said she hoped the premiership and looming promotion to Division 4 would provide a boost for the club heading into 2016.
“We can only hope at the end of the day that more people join and we can get those girls that are thinking about playing on board,” she said.
“Hopefully that’s what we get from it.”
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