Kyabram Bombers in incredible winning streak
With 81 wins from its last 82 games, can Kyabram lay claim to being the best country football team ever? The club’s only loss during the last four years is spurring them on to greater heights this year. So what is their secret?
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This country football juggernaut is just two wins away from a third undefeated premiership in four years.
Kyabram, a town which has produced AFL stars Garry Lyon and Brett Deledio, would actually be verging on a fourth consecutive perfect year if it wasn’t for a dramatic costly slip-up last September.
The Goulburn Valley league team entered last year’s grand final on an unprecedented 62-game win streak.
The run is believed to be a Victorian local football record, edging Vermont’s 61-game unbeaten run from 1988-1991.
The VFL-AFL record of 23 consecutive wins, set by Geelong in 1952 and 1953, pales in comparison.
Kyabram lost just once during Malcolm Turnbull’s term as Prime Minister (the 2015 grand final).
But as so many undeniable favourites have found out before, dominant form sometimes matters for little on grand final day.
The Bombers’ dreams of a flawless three-peat were crushed as Shepparton snatched the 2018 premiership by two points to win its first flag in 18 years.
A shattering result like that can break clubs (just ask Adelaide post-2017 grand final), but not this one.
The 2019 version of Kyabram is just as good as teams in the past.
The Bombers cantered through the home-and-away season 18-0 for the fourth straight year and held off rivals Echuca, coached by former Carlton star Andrew Walker, in Saturday’s qualifying final.
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Echuca is the only team that has threatened Kyabram’s dominance this year, but has lost their three outings by 61, 41 and 17 points.
It means Kyabram will go into this weekend’s second semi-final having won 81 of their last 82 games in the fourth-best competition in Victorian community football.
The GVL sits behind only the Northern, Mornington Peninsula and Geelong in the current AFL Victoria Community Championships rankings.
Before winning the 2016 grand final, only one GVL team had won a premiership without dropping a game — way back in 1939 during a World War II affected competition.
“A lot of people (externally) thought on the back of undefeated seasons and losing last year, that the wheels would fall off,” Kyabram co-coach Paul Newman told the Herald Sun.
“We’ve lost four grand finals since 2009 and they certainly don’t get any easier.
“But that loss has spurred everyone on to go back to the well for a crack at redemption.”
Newman said the club’s sustained success is multi-layered.
“Our group is really level-headed — we haven’t got any real outlandish sort of characters that get ahead of themselves,” he said.
“We set high standards as a team, rather than just going out there focusing on individual performances.
“We’ve had strong people in the club and leadership from within over a long period of time.”
While it’s been an incredible decade for the club on the field, things haven’t always been perfect.
Star full-forward Kayne Pettifer, who played 113 games for Richmond, has experienced serious tragedy — losing three relatives in two separate road accidents in 2017.
Pettifer incredibly took to the field in a semi-final just hours after hours after his aunt and uncle died.
In 2009, Pettifer lost his father Mick in a tragic road accident.
To go with that, young star Kyle Mueller was almost killed last year in a car crash before the final home-and-away game of the season.
But the small forward was thankfully cleared of serious injury after being flown to hospital in Melbourne and miraculously and took to the field in the grand final weeks later.
“We’ve gone through a fair bit, this mob,” Newman said.
”In the bigger scheme of things and looking at those things, losing a grand final like we did is not that important.”
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Already one of the best players in GVL history, Newman will also bow out as one of the competition’s top coaches.
He coached solo from 2016-2018, before former Brisbane Lion Sam Sheldon gave him a helping hand this year.
But Newman has announced he will be stepping down at the end of the year, meaning he could finish up with a coaching record of 83-1 and three premierships across four seasons.
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