The Greater Western Victorian Rebels created history over the weekend, making their first grand final appearance in 27 years with a stunning victory. And now, the team has the support of the last Rebels team to win a premiership.
GREATER Western Victoria (GWV) has qualified for its first Coates Talent League Grand Final since winning the competition in 1997 as the North Ballarat Rebels. The Country region, which finished the regular season in 11th, beat the 13th-placed Oakleigh Chargers by four points in Sunday’s prelim.
Both sides have enacted remarkable turnarounds since making it through Wildcard Round. They met at the same venue – RSEA Park – in Round 19, where the Rebels won by 13 points in an equally tense encounter. This time around, Oakleigh led for 90 per cent of the match before being pipped at the post.
Jonty Faull: The Rising Star
REDAN'S Jonty Faull has led the Greater Western Victoria Rebels into the grand final of the Coates Talent League, inspiring a last-quarter fightback in a thrilling match against Oakleigh Chargers on Sunday afternoon. In blustery wind at RSEA Park, the Rebels came from 16 points down at the last change against a woefully inaccurate Chargers to win 10.10 (70) to 8.18 (66).
Faull was dynamic up forward and should have rocketed up the AFL Draft order, booting five goals for the match, including the go-ahead goal at the 19-minute mark of the last quarter. This comes off the back of his four-goals in the quarter final the previous week against Geelong Falcons.
A Team Effort
Jack Ough then put the Rebels 10 points clear with four minutes on the clock before a late charge from Oakleigh, reduced the margin to just four points with three minutes to play. But the Rebels held their nerve in the desperate final moments to qualify for the grand final, giving the club its first chance at a premiership since Sydney Swans legend Adam Goodes burst onto the scene in 1997.
Coach David Loader said he couldn't have been more proud of his team after the come-from-behind win. "They didn't quit," he said. "It's something we've spoken about over the last few games, when we got four or five games out from the end of the season and we started to get all our good players back, we said 'right, we need to knuckle down now and show the footy world what we are capable of as a group'.
"The kids have just been able to find answers as we are going, we've chopped and changed so much, it was so similar to last week." Loader said Faull was giving a lot of AFL clubs something serious to think about. "He's going to give the clubs at the top of the Draft," he said. "Good players play well in big games. He's certainly had the opportunity to do that, but he's been fantastic, he works so hard at his craft all the time, we are just rapt for him and how he is going. He's got more to do."
The Legacy of Country Football
Greater Western Victoria Rebels carry an impressive football legacy best known for via its AFL and AFLW draftees but also for quality players and pure grit in state and grassroots leagues. The Rebels have always been about far more than developing promising football talent. From the start, this has been a program vying to holistically develop better young men and women by the time they graduate from the AFL under-18 talent pathways.
Now the boys have a chance at a remarkably rare opportunity - a grand final. The Rebels calculate about 9850 days have passed since they last made the Big Dance, a day they tasted premiership glory.
This is not because the Rebels have not been good enough in September, but rather the toll of being a country team. The AFL talent competition, under its various brandings, has long been notorious for its metropolitan franchises stacking their line ups with private schoolboys in the season's pointy end.
City boys can train as a squad multiple times per week and have the odd trip outside their metropolis bubble. Country boys in the Rebels' squad can travel from as far as Portland and Edenhope for mid-week training. Let alone the away games not just in Melbourne, but across the state.
Rebels premiership player Marc Greig, who would later coach the squad, would travel from Horsham. He said the competition had greatly evolved since his playing days but such dedication in the Rebels would not change. "One thing that will never go away is the travel and the willingness we have to do it," Greig said. "It's hard work - purely hard work.
"Character always comes through. Because we won, it probably gave a few more boys a look at AFL. I still remember recruiters from back then looking for kids who have more than just talent." Greig and Rebels premiership teammate Shane Fisher, who coaches Central Highlands club Hepburn, say there were no egos in their squad - and there was no room for egos, given the demands on players. They say the squad still had no egos when they regrouped for a reunion a couple of years ago.
The 1997 Premiership: A Moment in Time
Six Rebels from the 1997 premiership team were drafted to the AFL, right from across western Victoria: Hamilton trio Shannon Watt (North Melbourne), Sam Cranage (St Kilda/Carlton) and Marcus Picken (Brisbane Lions/Western Bulldogs), Lake Wendouree's James Walker (Fremantle), Beaufort's Shane O'Bree (Brisbane/Collingwood) and a breakout player in Horsham's Adam Goodes (Sydney Swans).
Plenty more, like Grieg (Horsham) and Fisher (Lexton), stepped up to the Victorian Football League. He had been playing down back for most of the season but match-up tactics in the final on the MCG had coach Gary Fletcher swapping Goodes up forward to put Nick Preston in the back lines. That final, Goodes booted six goals. He was drafted to the Swans at pick 43 on the day he sat his final English exam.
Goodes became a dual Brownlow medallist, a dual AFL premiership player, four-time all-Australian and became the first VFL/AFL player to chalk up 300 games within 13 years. He played 372 AFL matches with the Swans. The Rebels best and fairest trophy has been named in his honour and features artwork of his mother. Greig said being a country kid still demanded a mindset to work harder than any city folk to chase your dream, whether it be in sport or in moving for university. And it was about making the most of every opportunity, which Goodes had done that day moving up forward.
Two weeks before the grand final, the Rebels had been 44 points down at half-time in a semi-final and came back to win. Picken laid a tackle in the fourth quarter that proved a game-changer. It set the momentum for the pack of country boys to find themselves running out on the MCG on AFL grand final day to chase history.
Fisher, a boy from Lexton, vividly remembers the early start and sharing the rooms with the Richmond reserves and Adelaide. All from those rooms captured premierships that day. "We were just a really, really good group from all over western Victoria and we became lifelong friends," Fisher said.
"...The experience and the professionalism from the Rebels is something I've probably carried through my footy. We travelled to Canberra, Queensland and Tasmania. As someone who didn't get drafted to play on the highest level, I got to play VFL and the Rebels were the foundation for all of that." The Rebels' then-captain Shane O'Bree is said to have congratulated his team's premiership glory by saying "you've done a lot of travelling boys".
The Road Ahead
The Rebels, under coach David Loader, will take on Sandringham Dragons at Carlton's Princes Park stadium on September 21. Loader said this Rebels' outfit had done a big job climbing every mountain they have faced - including long-time heavyweight Oakleigh Chargers in the preliminary final. "We're punching out of our weight division but these kids keep having a crack," Loader said.
"...We've not got a big population base but we do cover a massive area in Victoria with players like (Connor) Weidemann travelling from Rapunyup and it's a long way for Sam Lalor from Bacchus Marsh and a long way for a player like Rhys Unwin from Cobden." The Rebels know they follow in impressive footsteps. The faces of AFL greats who wore the black-and-white adorn their rooms in Mars Stadium. That grand final in 1997 was the first time the Rebels wore black and white. This grand final day is for the 1200-odd country boys who have worn the guernsey since then.
