THERE will be more than 23 hungry Tigers at IKON Park on Sunday as a success-starved community throws its weight behind Werribee’s bid to break a 30-year premiership drought in the Smithy’s VFL Grand Final.
Werribee has been painted yellow and black in recent weeks as its heroes have gone on a record-breaking 17-match winning streak to reach the club’s first Grand Final since falling to Sandringham in 2005.
There has been no singing about the stands of Chirnside Park on Grand Final Day since the Tigers upset Port Melbourne for its only premiership so far in 1993, and the supporters who packed Avalon Airport Oval for their finals wins over Box Hill Hawks and Brisbane Lions will empty the town as they converge on Royal Parade.
For Michael Barlow, the Smithy’s VFL Coach of the Year, the challenge is to keep things as normal as possible ahead of the clash against the Gold Coast Suns in the premiership decider.
“You try to drum home that it’s going to be the same as the weeks leading in, but it is really impossible,” he told the State of Play podcast.
“We’ve got to embrace (the hype) as much as we can, but our guys don’t know much different.
“Sam Clohesy won the Fothergill-Round-Mitchell Medal and he is a great story, he’s unflappable, he wouldn’t have any increased anxiety or nerves about this week whatsoever.
“He just loves playing and talking to his teammates about how much he has fun and the trust he has in his teammates.
“I just dine out on that. The connection of our group, we’ve got to use it as a competitive advantage, the 23 that will play have committed together all year.
“I do talk about the harder edge that they work all day then come to training, that helps us late in games so that’s something I push towards the players.
“It’s not easy sometimes in the cut and thrust of winter but I think they’re finding a fair bit of motivation this week to get to training, do their craft, get their recovery done, get their diet right and prepare for Sunday.”
Werribee has promised great things since it lost a heartbreaking semi-final by three points to Essendon under Mark ‘Choco’ Williams in 2019.
However, the Tigers were outside the top eight when the season was cut short in 2021 and missed the finals again last year after a poor start and a series of close defeats.
But it has all come together so far this year, with the only two defeats a thrilling one-pointer away to the Brisbane Lions in Round 1 and a disappointing 13-point upset to Geelong in Round 4 where they kicked 5.17 to the Cats’ 9.6.
Since then, the only margins inside three goals were the comebacks against Gold Coast in Round 9 (two points) and Carlton in Round 13 (six points).
“Our 2022 season was dictated by results, and we were looking at the end result rather than worrying about the process,” Barlow said.
“I’ve had to lead from the front along with our leadership group, which is absolutely tremendous, and throwing it to the players that training is important, reviewing is important, preparing is important and then you get to the game and you shouldn’t have that angst because you should feel really well prepared.”
Barlow said the crowd would be in for a treat if the quality of the Grand Final repeated what was produced in the Round 9 encounter between the same two sides at Avalon Airport Oval.
“It will be great for the neutral if something like that was to be replicated,” Barlow said.
“It was a high-end level of VFL football and in the second quarter I genuinely said to our coaches we would take a lot from this, especially how we could respond.
“That was the moment in our season where we did respond and we probably had a bit of luck late in the game, but you make your own luck at times with the way you compete and commit to the contest so we got that result.
“We’ve been a side that in the last 12 months have lost a lot of close games, so from there we were able to take some confidence out of how those scenarios looked and getting a result on the positive rather than the negative.”
And if Werribee can produce the same result this weekend for an 18th-straight win?
Well, a second premiership will join the trophy cabinet some 30 years after the 1993 triumph.
