2002 CENTRAL MURRAY FOOTBALL LEAGUE GRAND FINAL
WOORINEN 17.13.115 def. SWAN HILL 15.13.103
As the current day Woorinen footballers are busy preparing themselves for their chance to create history tomorrow afternoon, it’s an opportune time to look back on the deeds of years gone by, with part three of this year’s Footy Finals Flashback series – the 2002 Woorinen upset victory over Swan Hill.
For years, the once-proud Woorinen had been languishing in the bottom half of the ladder, with the club’s last premiership being nine years earlier.
There had been very little success between then and 2002. While the Tigers had made it through to the Elimination Final 12 months earlier, they were quickly bundled out by the Cohuna Kangas.
It was a club that needed change, a club that was holding on to ideals of days gone by and a club that needed more than a coat of paint, as 2002 premiership player Caile Ditterich would attest to years later.
“Three years before the 2002 season, the Woorinen footy club was in huge debt, had the worst facilities in the league and had a pretty poor culture,” Ditterich said.
“A lot of the older guys had come and gone and they’d done their bit, it was a bit of an end of an era in a way and it was up the next generation to step up – and thankfully, there were a lot of people who are now in their 50s and 60s who did.”
That 2001 finals appearance was the spark that lit the fuse for the Tigers, who vowed that it would be the beginning of a new era at Woorinen. In a move that shocked the competition, the Tigers secured the services of the highly respected Wes Lewis as coach, along with the return of much-loved club legend Chris ‘Pa’ Wall from Tooleybuc. Together, Lewis and Wall then set about returning the club to its halcyon days, according to current Woorinen coach and 2002 premiership defender Marcus Demaria.
“With Wes taking charge, it was almost like putting together a jigsaw puzzle – we hadn’t had much success there for almost ten years and when the word got around town that Wes Lewis was coming to coach us, it just added a lot of excitement to the place,” Demaria said.
“Just to know what he could bring to the table and also the players that he could draw into the club, just had the place buzzing for the first time in years.”
While Lewis and Wall were both massive names in Central Murray circles, the Tigers also recruited a number of players from outside the competition, with players such as Ryan Tierney, Wade Allford and Wes’s brother, 182-game former Sydney Swan Dale Lewis, pulling on the yellow and black – with Dale not making his debut for Woorinen until mid-season.
But even with the Lewises, Wall and fellow experienced players Tyrone Jones and John Bergman, the Tigers were still relatively inexperienced – with that inexperience on show in the opening game of the season, according to Jones.
“I suppose considering how the year started, when we played Swan Hill in Round 1 and got absolutely smashed (Swan Hill defeated Woorinen by 60 points), I think everyone was thinking ‘this will be a long season’,” Jones said.
“It was a real mixture of players, Wes, ‘Pa’, myself and ‘Bergs’ (Bergman) would have been in our thirties, but the rest of them were all young – and that probably showed in a few games during the season when we got beaten in matches that we probably shouldn’t have.”
It didn’t take long for the side to click under the guidance of Lewis, and soon enough, the Tigers were roaring – finishing second on the ladder with a fifteen-win, two loss record for the season, with only Lake Boga beating them to top spot on percentage.
While the home-and-away season went largely according to plan, their Qualifying Final against Swan Hill did not, with the Swans defeating the Tigers by 20 points. Woorinen rebounded eight days later, beating Tyntynder by 16 points in the first Semi Final to keep their season alive – and set up a mouth-watering match-up with premiership favourites Lake Boga, who had also tasted defeat against the by now unstoppable Swan Hill.
Played at Tooleybuc, the now infamous Preliminary Final went all the way down to the dying moments, with an inaccurate Woorinen eventually prevailing by two points in a see sawing contest. The Tigers kicked 12.23.95, almost blowing their shot at a grand final with their inaccuracy in front of goal. Remarkably, Lake Boga scored two goals more (14.9.93) than the Tigers, yet lost the match – with Jones outlining the influence of their inspirational coach in the dying stages.
“It was a really tight game all day – Wade Allford took the game by the scruff of the neck after half time and basically won the game himself that afternoon,” Jones said.
“One moment that really sticks out in mind though is Wes (Lewis) making a game-saving tackle on Robbie Lee late in the game which in the end, helped us get over the line.”
“We had a few injury concerns out of that game, but we got through and that was the main thing.”
One of those injuries was to Jones himself, who suffered a broken jaw – while Dion Rhook and Scott McDonald were also under significant injury clouds leading into the grand final, yet all still took their place in the team for the big game. While Swan Hill went in fresh and as favourites following the well-earned week off, the Tigers were banged up and bruised.
Dale Lewis ended up needing an injection in his shoulder to get through the game, but with the impact the former AFL star had on his young teammates, he was never going to miss, remembered Jones.
“The expectation on him (Dale Lewis) from everyone outside the club when he arrived was that he would make a huge difference and be a major contributor – but he came in half way through the season without much training, so it took him a bit of time to get going,” Jones said.
“When he was out there, the young kids just stood a foot taller – everyone felt as though he could turn a game in five minutes, which he could.”
“In the grand final, he couldn’t even lift his shoulder above his head before half time due to an injection that didn’t go to plan – and we didn’t really see the best of him until after half time that day.”
With Woorinen’s tank seemingly running on empty, it was going to take an extraordinary performance to get the job done against a team who had had the wood on them for the majority of the season.
Enter Wes Lewis – the man who had dragged the club from also-ran to premiership contender off the field, then got the job done on the field, completely obliterating the Swans in the opening 30 minutes of the game and helping his team set up a 32-point lead in a blistering first quarter of the grand final. Lewis was everywhere in the opening term, providing run and carry through the midfield as well as getting forward and impacting the scoreboard himself, along with Ashley Bates, who started forward in a surprise move – and one that would prove to be a significant headache for the Swan Hill defenders.
The Swans fought back after the first change, booting seven goals in the second term to peg the margin back to just seven points by the main break, with Swan Hill coach Ash Connick and fellow tall forward Chris Caldow both getting dangerous inside the Swans attacking 50.
With the favourites now back in the contest, Woorinen had to do something different – which is where their master coach played the second of his trump cards, moving wingman Ryan Tierney to full-forward to start the second half. It was move that showed the tactical nous of the Tigers leader according to Tierney himself – and was a move that was six moths in the planning.
“It was a practice game when I played at full forward earlier in the season and I kicked a few goals that day and it ended up being a move that Wes left up his sleeve all year,” Tierney said.
“He actually made the comment at the time that we’ll leave it until the finals to pull that move and then he waited until the second half of the grand final until he did it.”
“I’d actually played a lot of school footy down there and enjoyed playing in the forward line so I was pretty comfortable playing there even if it shocked most people – it was great to go forward and have an impact, but more importantly it helped that I had pretty good delivery from the midfielders too.”
While Tierney kicked three goals that day, it very nearly didn’t happen – in fact, if not for a phone call just an hour earlier, the story told now could very easily have been completely different, as Tierney recalled.
“I was playing with Mildura in 2001 and Ash Connick (Swan Hill’s coach) was playing with Wentworth,” Tierney said.
“I just happened to sign with Woorinen for 2002 and it was no more than an hour or two later that Ash rings me up and tells me that he had been appointed coach at Swan Hill and he wanted me to come with him.”
“I let him know that he was a touch late and that I’d actually be playing against him and that I’d only just signed with Woorinen – I actually made a tongue in cheek comment the other day at our 20-year reunion that if Ash had of rung me a day earlier, I probably would have been celebrating a 20-year reunion at Swan Hill and not Woorinen.
“The story may have been a lot different if he had – and it’s perhaps a good recruiting lesson for those out there, that if you’re thinking of calling someone, pick up the phone and do it straight away.”
The arm wrestle continued after half time, with Swan Hill midfielder Gene Brooks turning it on with three third-quarter goals as the Swans continued to attack the tiring Woorinen. With both teams now neck and neck on the scoreboard, it was anybody’s game at the final break, with the Tigers holding a slender three-point advantage.
That was when Lewis played his third trump card of the day, injecting club legend ‘Pa’ Wall into the midfield, who spent the first three quarters playing out of the back pocket. Wall, along with Lewis, dominated the final 30 minutes of the game in a commanding display that is long remembered by all who witnessed it.
The exhausted Woorinen coach turned it on in the last quarter, even kicking the match winning goal after finding space and marking the ball at centre half forward. But it was his will to win that Demaria remembers most about his former coach that day – and his never-give-up approach to the game.
“I’ve never seen anyone so driven – there was a photo that was taken after the game where we had the whole group together and Wes is just sitting on the ground and he looks absolutely exhausted,” Demaria said.
“He absolutely gave his all that day and had nothing left in the tank, he just willed himself on from contest to contest and just kept going.”
“He pushed forward and kicked a couple of goals and even though you could see he was exhausted, he just kept trying to drag everyone along with him.”
For Ditterich, the other big contributor in that final quarter turnaround was the legendary Wall, whose addition to the midfield not only caught the Swans off guard, but also set the Tigers alight out of the middle.
“One of the big reasons why we were able to fight back and win was that we had someone like Chris Wall sitting in a back pocket for three quarters,” Ditterich said.
“You have potentially the best player on the ground sitting in the back pocket and when you go back and watch the game, while his impact was profound for three quarters, it was in the last quarter when we injected him into the game and he just took over that changed it.”
“Swan Hill had played all their trump cards and given everything, whereas we just had that answer each time and we were a bit inspired by that, I think.”
Despite having the harder run into the grand final, Woorinen finished full of running, kicking four goals to two in the last quarter to give themselves a 17.13.115 to 15.13.103 victory. Lewis’s memorable four quarter performance saw him awarded the VCFL Medal as best afield, with his efforts inspiring his team to the most unlikely of victories.
Remarkably, Lewis not only inspired that talented crop of Tigers twenty years ago – but his teachings are still inspiring the current Woorinen playing list in an indirect fashion via their current coach Demaria – a disciple of the Lewis era who himself has gone on to inspire a generation of Woorinen footballers as a result.
“Wes is a mentor of mine and someone who I’ve always looked up to,” Demaria said.
“You go through your footy career and you have heaps of coaches, but the information that I’ve retained from my playing days has all been from Wes Lewis – he drummed it into you to the point where you still remember it 20 years later.”
“Wes had the ability to get the best out of each individual and then the ability to mould a team together and then get the best out of that team – and you never knew what he’d have up his sleeve pre-game.”
“He just gave us that belief that no matter what the situation was in a game, that we could always win – that if we competed hard and competed hard right to the end, that we would get ourselves over the line.”
While Ditterich’s football career would be cruelly cut short due to injury, he also agreed with his premiership teammate on the impact of his premiership coach on not only his footballing journey – but also life in general.
“Wes wasn’t naturally gifted like say a Chris Wall or a Dean Bennett to be fair, everything Wes has in life and in football is because of sheer hard work and dedication,” Ditterich said.
“With Wes, it is all-in – I haven’t seen anyone that goes all-in like he does.”
“Our expectation at Woorinen of what you needed to do to win before Wes was about 10 per cent of what was required under him – he taught us about football, because up until Wes came along, most of us didn’t really understand football – we thought we did, but the reality is we didn’t.”
“We were just another club making up the numbers.”
“He was intense, he was hard and uncompromising, but he led from the front – he wasn’t just a’ do as I say and not as I do’ person, he was everything.”
“He taught us that to be successful, you have to work hard and that nothing comes easy – everyone says that and everyone says you have to work hard, but very few people actually get it, whether that’s in life or in sport.”
“But Wes gets it and understands that there’s sacrifices to be made and that same sacrifice was what we all had to make as well.”
“His old saying was that everyone wants the rewards, but nobody’s willing to put in for it – he was a quite possibly the best thing that ever happened to the Woorinen footy club.”
