Disappointed coaches to talk over futures
PREMIERSHIP- winning Thomson leaders Brent Taylor and Reece Holwell will spend this week discussing their futures after the bitter grand final loss.
Taylor said he and his cocoach would weigh up their future after telling the club they would not decide about 2020 until after the decider.
While the Bannockburn theme song boomed from one side of the oval as a circle of players, coaches and supporters belted out their joy post-siren, the Thomson side stood in virtual silence 30m away.
Favoured by almost all pundits after a season of dominance, the minor premier stood in a scattered circle of disbelief.
Taylor slowly moved through the players and embraced each one but even he admitted he had nothing to say.
“It was a surreal feeling, you are just thinking, ‘is this real?’ ” he said.
“It was pretty flat obviously, a lot of guys were extremely disappointed.
“Grand finals, they’re hard to win. Extremely hard to win.”
Thomson appeared on a march to back-to-back flags at halftime, after kicking clear in an imperious second term.
But a 15-minute burst to start the final quarter was enough for Bannockburn to secure an upset win.
Despite the increasingly wet conditions, Bannockburn managed to stick its marks in the crucial period and take their chances.
Despite controlling possession in the second half of the term, Thomson failed to find targets inside its forward 50 and only managed a goal with less than a minute to play.
Taylor said if this was his last game in charge at Thomson he would leave proud of his achievements but still bitterly disappointed.
“Obviously, it would have been nice to win it again but it didn’t go that way,” he said.
“In a few weeks time when it settles a little bit and you can look back, you will probably think we have done a good job.
“I suppose it all gets forgotten then because to lose today you don’t think of it as a successful year because unless you win on the last day it’s not really a successful year.”