Centurions on march
Upset win has team dreaming of finals
THE chance to break a sixyear finals drought has not been lost on Werribee Centrals coach Nick Smith.
But the Centurions will not be getting ahead of themselves despite knocking off previously unbeaten Thomson at home on Saturday.
The Centurions have finished between sixth and 10th over the past five seasons, last making finals in 2013, which ended in an elimination final defeat.
But Smith led his side to its best win under his tutelage, smashing the ladder-leading Tigers by 51 points.
So clinical was the win, they held the reigning premier goalless for three quarters after setting the tone for the afternoon with five unanswered goals in the opening term.
Down by 64 points at the final break, the Tigers kicked four goals to trim the margin, but it was to no avail, with the Centurions claiming their fifth win on the trot and stamping themselves as a premiership threat.
“You have to say, if you can do that to the undefeated team then surely you’ve got to be a contender,” Smith said.
“But the challenge we’ve got is we’ve still got five weeks just to make sure we make the finals and I hope that will remain a driving force and stop us getting ahead (of ourselves).
“We’re still a game behind Bannockburn in third, we didn’t make ground today.”
He said his side was playing good enough footy to be considered a challenger but it was yet to prove itself.
“What you do in the finals can be determined by how you’re playing and that’s why, at the moment, we’re pretty confident we’re a good chance of making the finals,” he said.
“And that if we make it, I don’t think there’s many teams that will want to play us.”
“You’d have to ask other coaches (what the outside perception is) but from our perspective, all we can do is keep playing our footy and keep preparing for whoever is in front of you.
“The last thing we want to do is to now drop a game against a team that comes out and goes hunting after us and we’re not ready for it.”
Smith credited his side’s ability to win the footy at the coalface as key to Saturday’s victory.
“To keep them goalless for three quarters is a real credit to our clearance work, our contested work and our pressure,” he said.
“And our backline held up under a lot of pres pressure at times as well I thought.
“I thought this was the culmination of what we’d been building the last four weeks.
“I’d made it quite clear I thought we could win, but you have to play well and have to do all the things well and (the players) did them very well. “Good footy for a young group feeds the confidence that, ‘Hey, we can do this’. “It wasn’t just a win, it was extraordinary. I was pinching myself for most of it.”