FOR the second season in a row, the WDEA Works Saints and the Pizza Kitchen Tigers will face off in the SHDCA McDonald’s T20 Grand Final.
Twelve months ago, it was the Tigers who took home the title, defeating the Saints by 33 runs.
It was a result which helped set up Woorinen’s season as they grew in confidence on the back of that victory, to eventually go on and claim the SHDCA premiership for the first time in eight seasons.
While the Pizza Kitchen Tigers will look back on last season and garner confidence knowing they’ve done the job done in the past, the WDEA Works Saints will also go into the match with a positive attitude, having gone through the tournament undefeated.
WDEA Works Saints co-captain Austin McKerrow spoke with The Guardian ahead of tonight’s decider and said that for his team, the results this season would mean more than those from twelve months ago.
“It’s been a really good start to the season for us – a lot of our batters have found some good form, especially after the last couple of games with Coddo (Bailey Codling) and Riley (Daniels) at the top batting well, as well as Jake (Foster) who made a fifty in the last game,” McKerrow said.
“Even last week against Ult-TUFCC, we were very close to losing that game a couple of times, but our confidence is such that even though we started poorly, we always felt we were in the game.”
“We were lucky Shotsy (Jack Shannahan) came in when he did and got us to a defendable score – from there, all our bowlers bowled really well and they couldn’t really get us away.”
For the Saints, tonight’s game will see them play in their fourth straight T20 decider, having claimed the premiership twice previously in 2018-19 and 2019-20.
“T20 is a format that really suits us – it’s just been our batting collapses that have hurt us in past, but I think this year’s a bit different with a few new guys coming into the line-up to strengthen up our batting,” McKerrow said.
In terms of favouritism, Pizza Kitchen Tigers skipper Jason Mangiameli was happy to hand that tag to his opposition, claiming that based on this season’s results, his team would definitely go in as underdogs.
“We’re coming up against the team of the tournament, they haven’t lost a game so far and they’re obviously the team to beat – but as we all know, twenty-20 is a funny format and anyone on their day can win,” Mangiameli said.
“We’re going in pretty confident that we have a team that can do some damage with either the bat or ball.
“Winning big games, with the same group, just builds confidence for when you play in those big games again – we’ll back ourselves in, obviously we’ll have a few different players to last year, as they will as well, but we’ll back ourselves in.
“They’re (the Saints) strong with both disciplines, but I’d say their bowling is probably their strong suit – they’ve got some good bats as well, but I think if we can get a decent enough total with the bat then we’ll be pretty confident we can defend it – but that’s obviously easier said than done.”
