Warburton Millgrove Football Netball Club

Senior Footy

The Burras had a solid season, finishing fourth, winning eight games and losing seven before losing to Yarra Junction in the first round of finals. They weren’t too far off it though, having beaten Yarra Junction in Round 11 by 26 after going down by one to them in Round 3 and getting soundly beaten in Round 14.

“We played them three times; they beat us twice and we beat them once.

“Every time we played them, it was a good game, so whoever was best on the day was going to win,” said Senior Coach James Iacono.

They also managed to defeat Grand Finalists Kinglake in Round 10, which Iacono said, “I think we went on a five-game winning streak and one those victories was Kinglake up there.”

“After that game I think everyone realised that if we bring our best football, on our day, we can beat anyone. We definitely got confidence from that game.”

Moving onto next year Iacono expressed that further improvement was going to come from the continued development of younger players.

“In our final against Yarra Junction, we had about 10 players who were 23 or under.”

“We’re still going to go out and recruit a couple of players, but the majority of our improvement will be from our young kids.”

Up forward Trent Elliot (team of the year) was massive kicking 38 goals from just 15 games, Brady Mitchell with 37 from 16 and Mitch Bonuda was very damaging with 28 from just 11.

Other standouts for the season include Patty Huynh (team of the year), Shawn Andueza (team of the year), Jack Farrugia, Nelson Aldridge and Timothy McKail.

They could easily have a few reserves or under 18 players pushing up as they both won the premiership flag.

 

Netball

In A Grade, they capped off an outstanding (undefeated) season with a Premiership, following an undefeated run last season.

Five and a half wins ahead of the second placed Powelltown, Warburton Millgrove comfortably defeated fourth placed Broadford after a dominant second half to win 39-25.

Coach Nat Petrucev conveyed that the undefeated run last year was matched and rewarded this year, “we definitely went into the season sitting undefeated from last season, and we definitely wanted to back that up and saw no reason why we couldn’t replicate another undefeated season; we only added strength to our team from last year.”

Such was their dominance all year that they outscored the next highest scoring team in Alexandra, by 116 goals. Shae Gee (team of the year) scored 441 goals for the year whilst Bianca Daniels scored 296.

Ally Langdon was excellent as Goalkeeper and was brilliant in the Grand Final also. As well as Shae Gee, Ally was acknowledged in Team of the Year, as was Selina Fotia.

Whilst acknowledging that winning Premierships aren’t easy, Nat believes they should be right up there again next year, “Coming back, same team, building on the structures we already have, there’s no reason why we can’t come out and be dominant again.”

Even though they were clearly the best side in Division 2 A Grade for the last two years, there are still areas of improvement that Nat identified,                                                                                             

“There are areas of improvement; we barely played one full game of netball in the season, despite being undefeated. We didn’t really show how good we could be.”

If Warburton Millgrove can put four quarters of netball together on a regular basis, they could become an even scarier opponent than they already are.

“We had games with a slow start and games where the concentration lapsed, and we maybe didn’t expect the opponent to come back at us.”

It will be a tough assignment taking down Warburton Millgrove in A Grade in 2023, even more so if they can string full games together.

Warburton Millgrove’s C Grade, D Grade and 17&U’s Netball also won Premierships, capping off a brilliant year overall for the Burras.

 

Written by Jordan Peeler