From 10pm on Friday night to 2pm on Sunday, it seemed most of the football world was preoccupied with how the Werribee Tigers would give up their Victorian Football League finals berth, not how they were about to preserve it.
When ninth-placed Geelong put the sword to Essendon in an impressive 54-point victory under lights on Friday night, it gave way to commentary centred on a premature obituary of the Tigers’ season ahead of their do-or-die game.
Amid the fanfare of the Cats levelling up premiership points with an under-the-pump Werribee, the fact remained that the Tigers still had a game to come and, as coach John Lamont pointed out, “destiny in their own hands”.
The Tigers did not deviate from their focus of finding a way to beat Frankston, no matter what the permutations, and proceeded to nut out a hard-fought 25-point win on the difficult trip to the Frankston Oval.
“To be honest with you, I didn’t even talk about other results,” Lamont said. “The beauty of destiny being in your own hands is we just had to win the game and we did.”
This was the pick-me-up the Tigers needed ahead of the finals after a brutal month.
They had to get back to some winning touch having suffered three consecutive home losses.
The Dolphins were not going to give up their home turf easy, a fact Lamont stressed to his team before the game.
“Frankston has been tremendously competitive all year,” he said. “You need to be on the job down there.”
It took nothing short of a four-quarter effort, something that had been lacking during the previous weeks’ losing streak.
An even spread of contributors was needed and that’s what Lamont got from his team, including nine individual goalkickers.
“That summed up our performance,” Lamont said.
“There were a lot of blokes that contributed and that’s what you need.”
The Tigers achieved what they set out to do at the start of the preseason – achieve a winning season.
They finished 10-8, a “rung or two” below where Lamont would have hoped and slightly detached from the top four, which Lamont admits is a fair outcome.
“We’re a little bit short of a top four,” he said. “It’s a good reward without being over the top.”
The Tigers have set up an elimination final date with North Ballarat at North Port Oval on Sunday from 2.10pm.
They can enter the match with confidence, having taken the honours in the only meeting between the sides this year back in round 13.
VFL FINALS WEEK 1
First elimination final: Collingwood v Sandringham (Victoria Park, Saturday, 2pm)
First qualifying final: Port Melbourne v Box Hill Hawks (North Port Oval, Saturday, 2.10pm)
Second qualifying final: Footscray v Williamstown (Whitten Oval, Sunday, 1pm)
Second elimination final: Werribee Tigers v North Ballarat (North Port Oval, Sunday, 2.10pm)
