Tara Murray
St Albans amazing finals run came to a crashing end on Saturday in the Essendon District Football League division 1.
Having won their first final since 2010 in the first week of finals, the Saints were then impressive in their semi final demolition of Hillside.
There would be no repeat of that on Saturday in the preliminary final against West Coburg.
The Saints were left to rue missed opportunities as West Coburg made them way on the way to an 11.16 (82)-2.12 (24) win and a third straight grand final.
Saints coach Zammy Muhtari said it was a disappointing way to end the season.
“The first quarter was evenly matched and they had a slight breeze advantage to one end,” he said.
“Pretty close at quarter time there were only a couple of goals in it and then in the second quarter we felt like we had all the momentum and assendency.
“I think we kicked 0.5 and two on the full, bad kicking really hurt us but we kept ourselves in at half time.
“Credit to West Coburg and used the wind advantage in the third quarter was always going to make it hard and we were chasing from there.”
Josh Carter and Victor Micallef were the goal scorers for the Saints. Bill Sam, Matthew Grundy and Micallef were named their best.
Muhtari said the way they finished the season was slightly disappointing.
“It’s disappointing that we didn’t convert,” he said. “We had two quarters going with the breeze, which is a minimum four or five goal breeze.
“We kick 0.9 with the breeze and a total of five on the full. It just deflated us more than anything.”
Muhtari said while disappointed with the ending, it had been a season where they’d made some big inroads.
The club was knocked out in the first week of finals last year in their first season in the competition.
“It’s been a great journey,” he said. “We finished off strong towards the back end of the year with a couple wins and then to build some momentum and make it through finals and to get two finals wins and make our debut in the EDFL prelim.”
Muhtari said it had been nice to showcase some of their younger players this season, who would only be better for the experience.
He said Brodie Lyons-Jones in his second year in senior footy while still playing 18s, Alex Tsia and Luke McManus, who had previously only played reserves footy, were bright spots for the future.
Josh Klaramenos was one that was able to reap the rewards for the hard work that he had done.
Muhtari said they want to continue to build next year.
“We’ll sit back and we’ll analyse the year,” he said. “We’ll take all the positives out of it, we’ll work on areas that we need to work on and then obviously start looking at all the other things.”
West Coburg will play Maribyrnong Park in the grand final.
