A season of promise came to a crashing end for Deer Park in the Essendon District Football League premier division competition.
In their first premier division finals series, the Lions were hoping to go deep into September and challenge the best.
But that was halted on Sunday, as the Lions lost an elimination final to Airport West.
Airport West led by two points at quarter time and then nine points at half time.
It blew out to 32 points in the third quarter and stayed about the five goal margin for the rest of the game with the Eagles winning, 12.21 (93)-9.9 (63).
Lions coach Jamie Madigan said it was a really disappointing end to the season.
“We had so many players down on the day,” he said. “Credit to Airport West they wanted it more and credit to them.
“We felt like we had too many players down on the day. We didn’t execute at all and they controlled the tempo all game and had a lot of uncontested marks.”
Spiros Amarantidis and Hayden Gill kicked two goals each for the Lions.
Jack Noonan, Diesel Moloney and Jake McKenzie were named their best.
Madigan said had you said at the start of the season that they’d make finals they would have been happy.
He said it would have been nice to win a final and had shown that their best was good enough.
Madigan said injuries at the wrong time of year hadn’t helped them either.
Gill, their number one ruck, had to play forward in the final due to a neck injury, while Zen Christofi finished the semi final on the bench with a calf injury that he had been carrying.
Kier Bol also hurt his hamstring in the semi final.
Luke Schicchitano, Jackson Barling, Ling Jong all missed the final with injury, while Dion Hill was suspended.
“The injuries … Those four out hurt the team and a lot of the momentum. Going down in the last four weeks hurt our depth.
We had Lincoln Clements, an under-16 in our finals team. We had Flynn Adams, a bottom age under-18 player, play the last nine games.”
Madigan said getting games into their younger players would be one of the highlights of the season.
They had 44 players play across the senior side and 10 of them were either under-18s or under-16s.
Both their under-16s teams made finals and would progress into the senior ranks in the coming years.
Airport West will face Aberfeldie in a knockout semi final this Sunday.
Keilor, which had the week off, will face Strathmore for a spot in the grand final on Saturday.
