The Big Day has finally arrived and Huge Congratulations to those teams that have completed the trip to WIN Stadium.

Special mention should go to the Fernhill Football Club who are represented by all three grades, no mean feat by any stretch of the imagination but more impressive when you consider that the club was struggling to field three teams close to the start of the 2015 Season. What a turn around!

Also, what about Super Coach, Barney King? The likeable Geordie, has been at the helm of the Warilla Wanderers for six seasons, and today the Wanderers are playing in there fifth Grand Final during that period. Prior to this stint with Warilla, King was head coach at Berkeley Football Club for four seasons where he managed to get them to three Grand Finals. Talk about the Midas Touch!

 

Saturday September 24th @ WIN Stadium

 

Warilla Wanderers v Fernhill -  First Grade KO 3.00pm

After knocking over Corrimal Rangers in the Major Semi Final, two weeks ago, Warilla coach Barney King fully expected to be playing the Rangers in a re-match. However, with the demise of the League Champions in last week's Prelimanary Final has meant that King will need to tinker with his tactics and playing formation against the Foxes who he considers a different proposition.

He is of the opinion that Fernhill love to play the ball wide rather than 'up the middle' and his side will need to adapt accordingly.

The four goals to two victory over Fernhill in week one of the Final Series should hold the Wanderers in good stead but the Coach knows too well that the Foxes created a great number of chances on the night and but for an heroic performance by his own Goalkeeper, Bradley Hunter, the result could have been oh so different.

King will be confident of a victory going into the fixture but the Wanderers will not be taking anything for granted even if he believes that his side has the players with better technical quality, he knows that Fernhill do not give anything less than 100% and his side are going to have to be good to win it.

There are a couple of injury concerns for Warilla with Bojan Caric and Luke Everingham nursing injuries emanating from the 'never say die' win against Corrimal in which Warilla were playing catch up football for the 120 minutes+ it took to win the tie.

Caric and Everingham will be given to the last minute to prove their fitness. Should leading scorer, Caric be forced to drop out, Luke Greathead will fill the void and is more than capable as proven with his hat-trick in the win over Corrimal. Paul Gaffney will come in for Luke Everingham should the need arise otherwise the experienced Gaffney will come off the Bench.

Over in the Fernhill Camp, Coach Daniel McGoldrick, who has been very instrumental in the turnaround in fortunes over the past two seasons is very pleased to have 3 teams in the Grand Final.

He went onto say that, "we defended like demons against Corrimal (1-0 win) but kept them in the game with some poor finishing. Warilla, it's fair to say, have shaded us, across the season, and in the first play-off game. If we are going to lift the trophy, we will need to be at our defensive best against a Warilla team that has goals in them. I believe we will create enough chances to win the match but must take our chances, eliminate the costly errors, from the first semi, and fight to the end. Warilla play very effective football. They play the channels well and, when presented with good scoring opportunities, hit the back of the net. To win, we will need to be at our, collective, best".

Fernhill do not have any injury concerns but have lost Julian Cesta-Incani after he was sent off in the win over Corrimal last Saturday. McGoldrick will re-shuffle his side with the instrumental, Marc Sergi, who was unavailable against the Rangers, slotting back into his customary mid-feld role with Matt Richardson switching back to left full back and Anthony Oliver reverting to Centre Back.

Referee - Andrew Naylor
Assistants - Adam Naylor and Greg Reid
Fourth Official - Stuart Bell

 

Fernhill v Wests Illawarra - Youth Grade KO 12.15pm

With good wins over Wests (3-1) and League Champions, Helensburgh Thistle (3-0) during the Final Series one would expect that the Fernhill camp might be confident of taking out the Grand Final but Coach Kevin Chilby was not getting ahead of himself as the date with destiny draws closer.

Chilby, who was the Coach of the victorious, Corrimal Rangers Youth Side at the same stage in 2015 was adamant that the Big One was anybody's game. He felt that the top six or seven sides in this years competition were all capable of winning on their day and it was a fairly even competition.

Unfortunately, for Fernhill they have lost two key players, Kyle Proctor (injured) and Cody Jones (suspended) for the big game and Jones who scored 23 goals in the competition could be sorely missed.

The Foxes do have a bit of experience in their side with a number of players moving across from Corrimal with the Coach after last year's success. Chilby added that Captain, Andrew Drapaniotis, who is an ex-Wests player, has been a tower of strength in his side as the skipper who leads by example and he expects him to move onto first grade in 2017.

Over in the Wests Illawarra camp, Coach Jorge De Matos who his having his first coaching stint at Senior Level spoke about how nervous his boys were when they met Fernhill in the first semi, lacking in experience and they simply didn't turn up on the night.

Since then, playing sudden death football, Wests have bounced back to account for Thirroul on penalties (3-3 draw) and then Helensburgh (1-0) to set up this re-match for a chance at picking up some silverware.

De Matos' team is at full strength and pinpointed Aiden Gallo who happens to be the team's leading scorer in the competition proper with 18 goals, as his most consistent player although he was adamant that it will be collectively as a team that will have them in good stead on game day.

This year has been a big learning curve for the side as they were the Port Kembla U/16 side that took all before them in 2015 including a Champion of Champions trophy before moving across on bloc to Wests Illawarra for a taste of Senior Football.

Just like the Reserve Grade game, this match has goals written all over it with the two sides scoring a combined 186 goals in the 22 competition rounds and amazingly when the teams met previously this season, the three games produced 20 goals. What chance a nil-nil draw?

Referee - Aiden Crawley
Assistants - Michael Bell and Brodie Merchant
Fourth Official - Jarryd Higgins

 

Fernhill v Thirroul FC - Reserve Grade KO 10.00am

Fernhill were first into the Grand Final after Toby Napper scored a last gasp winner and the only goal of the game in the win over League Champions, Thirroul in the Major Semi Final two weeks ago.

Games between these two protagonists, have been extremely close in 2016 with Thirroul winning the two league games by the odd goal also.

If Fernhill are to complete the double over Thirroul in the Final Series, Foxes' Coach Mick Rowles believes that his side will need to contain Thirroul's attacking threats as they have been very effective at breaking down other sides to create numerous goal scoring opportunites.

Rowles wants to make sure that his side can build on a foundation of a solid defence to create their own brand of football that provides his own attacking weapons with plenty of opportunities to make an impression on the scoreboard.

Thirroul Coach, Kevin Lewis agrees that there has not been a lot between the two sides during the season and the major semi was another tight affair and the Grand Final could go either way.

Similar to Fernhill, the Thunder have no injury concerns going into the decider and one thing that might get his side over the line is the fact that 13 players of the squad have substantial first grade experience. Lewis pointed out that no individual has stood out and if his team is to take the spoils it will be through a team effort.

This promises to be an entertaining affair with the two sides scoring 160 goals between them during the regualr season but on the same token both defences stood firm with only 37 goals between the two conceded. Let's hope they don't cancel each other out!

Referee - John Ruscica
Assistants - Ryan O'Sullivan and Max Vercoe
Fourth Official - Gareth Jenkins

 

By David Naylor