By Lance Jenkinson
Deer Park is the first club in the history of Western Region Football League division 1 to land the premiership in an undefeated season.
The Lions are the kings of the jungle for the second year running after their star-studded line-up obliterated Spotswood by 77 points in a desperately lopsided grand final at Chirnside Park in Werribee on Saturday.
The Lions blitzed from the outset, recording an incredible 48 scoring shots to 21.
Lions veteran Luke Summers said he was rapt to be part of “history in the making”.
“This is the ultimate – an unbelievable feeling,” he said.
The last time Deer Park achieved a premiership repeat was way back in 1939-41, when it won three in a row under the club’s former club, ICI.
This was a much easier grand final for the Lions to win than last year’s one-point cliffhanger win over Spotswood, which has lost the past three season deciders.
The Lions have claimed four premierships from eight consecutive grand final appearances.
The tipping point on Saturday came at the 19-minute mark of the third quarter when Shylo Smith booted the goal of the game from tight up on the boundary at the swimming pool end with barely a flicker of daylight between the goal posts.
That put the Lions 47 points up and broke the spirit of the Woodsmen, who until then had been staging a mini-fightback early in the third term.
The Lions might have had the game under lock and key before half-time had they not missed a bevy of scoring opportunities.
“If we had’ve kicked straight, I don’t know what the record was for a grand final win, but we probably would’ve broken the record,” Summers said.
Spotswood booted the first goal of the game, fittingly through onballer David Iaccarino.
Iaccarino would have five goals by game’s end to be the clear stand-out player on his side.
While the Woodsmen had early success at the stoppages through ruckman Murray Boyd and onballers Iaccarino, Shaun Ross and Tom Langlands, they were getting beaten in all other areas of the ground.
The Woodsmen’s defensive unit was jittery from the first bounce, turning the ball over with dinky short passes and seeing the ball returned with interest.
The Lions did not find their range in the first quarter but ran riot in the second with nine goals to two.
The Lion machine was firing on all cylinders from the second term onwards, with winners in blue and gold guernseys all over the park.
As it so often has, it started in the middle with ruckman Chris Stewart, one of the great players in his position in the modern era of the western suburbs competition.
Stewart fed the ball on a platter to runners Smith, Jack Purton-Smith and Rhett King.
Smith finished with five goals from the centre – an incredible performance that on another day might have won him the player-of-the-game medal.
Ben Foley and Jackson Barling were steady in the key defensive posts, while Shaun Harrison was superb with his intercept marking and rebound out of the back half. Daniel Cooper and James Condos were a constant headache for the Woodsmen defenders.
But the Herb Pascarl Medal honours for best-on-ground went to Kwame McHarg.
He finished with seven goals and had barely a scratch on him because his dancing feet made it nigh on impossible for the Woodsmen to lay a finger on him.
Summers, so often the one tagged in previous years, is a luxury for Deer Park player-coach Marc Bullen.
While the opposition has been putting work into the Lions’ former AFL crew of Bullen, Ryan Houlihan, Ryan Hargrave, Bret Thornton and Brent Guerra, along with the host of top-notch midfielders on their books, Summers has lapped up the chance to enjoy a bit more freedom.
“When you see the team that comes out on to the field … I’m probably the 10th in line with blokes like Shylo Smith, Kwame McHarg, who won the medal, Heath Ayres and these blokes, it makes my job a bit easier,” Summers said.
It was an extra special day for Summers, who missed last year’s grand final through suspension. The 33-year-old was the captain of the Lions’ side that went undefeated in 2009 to win the division 2 flag.
A former junior at the club, Summers returned to achieve what he described as “the ultimate” of winning a division 1 premiership.
“I knew [club president] Mark McGoldrick pretty well – he coached me when I was 16 years old,” Summers said. “He asked me to come back to the club when it was in a bad way in division 2.
“And here I am today, the club is back where it should be and I’m stoked.
“I’m just rapt to get an A-grade premiership, that’s what I came to the club for and it finally paid off. The turnaround is unbelievable.”
