Steve May and Andrew Ferrell are the Co Coaches of the Yass Roos.
We caught up with Steve post the GF win. Steve said, “We had a one point win. It’s just absolutely amazing. We still can’t believe it.
“We went into the match. The lead up was pretty good, but we had a lot of disappointment on Friday when our co-captain Sam Williams had to pull out. He dislocated his shoulder in the preliminary final. And we thought we could strap him up and get him right to go, but he got his MRI scan back and he’d done a lot of damage, the poor bugger. He chose to withdraw on the Friday.”
“It was a real motivating factor for us. We really wanted to do it for Sammy because he’s the heart and soul of the club, and just devastating, but he’s still a massive part of the win.”
“That was probably the main thing that went wrong. And then we had to leave a couple of guys out, which is really sad as well, guys who have made a big contribution throughout the year, but unfortunately you can only pick 22.”
“Going into the game, I think the main challenge was to try and make sure our players believed they could win because we were up against it. We’re the rude underdogs. This team was undefeated. They’d won the last two premierships. We’re such a young side and it’s only our 2nd year in this division.
“The last two grand finals, they beat Bateman’s Bay. Bateman’s Bay had finished on top of the ladder in both of those years, and Woden had upset them a little bit, I guess, in the grand final, and then Bateman’s Bay went up a division this year.”
“Woden went into this season as red hot favourites and very confident that they were going to win it because their main opponent was out of the way.
“They beat us by 20 goals last year, that’s how much we’ve improved.”
“Going into the grand final, Woden were red hot favourites, we were a very, very young side. They’re very experienced, physical side. They’ve probably got a 20 kilogram per player weight advantage on us. We’re young and fit and fast, so we thought that if on a warm day as well, that could suit us. We thought that if we hung in there long enough in the game, we could run over the top of them in the end, and that’s exactly the way it panned out.
“The first quarter, we started really well. We knew a good start was really important because they’d blown ADFA out of the water the week before in the 1st quarter.
“We got a really good start the first five or ten minutes, but then Woden took control for a little bit.
“Woden missed a few easy chances in that first quarter. They were 2 goals 6 at a quarter time. I’m thinking, okay, that’s helped us stay in the game, they led by 10 points.
“Second quarter didn’t start well. Woden got on a roll. They kicked 3 goals in a row, so halfway through the second quarter, we were down 37 to eight and I was just thinking, oh, boys, please, we don’t want to get blown out of the water here. How embarrassing. Let’s just hang in there and make this a contest.
“We kicked two late goals in the 2nd quarter to get within 16 points at halftime.”
“We felt at halftime that we were still in the game because we kept saying to ourselves, look, it’s a warm day. We already saw signs that they were starting to tire, they are going to run out of steam. We could run over the top of them. We’re never out of this.
“The boys were still pretty positive at half time.
“By the time we went back out again, I think they still believed they could do it.
“We got off to a pretty good start in the 3rd quarter, we got the 1st couple of goals, so that gave us a real boost, and we got within 5 points. But then Woden kicked the last 2 goals of the 3rd quarter, including one after the siren. That could have taken the wind out of our sails a little bit, and I think Woden were really pumped at three quarter time. I think they thought they had it won because they kicked that last goal on the siren. They were 18 points up and our boys, we still believed, though, we had a really good chat at three quarter time and we thought we knew they were tiring and we knew we had a big last quarter in us. We had plenty in the tank.
Our co-captain who was playing, Ryan Forlonge gave a really inspiring speech at three quarter time.”
“Ryan came into the game, he hadn’t played for four or five weeks with a quad injury and he was struggling. He was in a lot of hurt during the game. His performance was amazing.
He was just a warrior. He was really hurting, but he kept ploughing on.”
“Last quarter begins and we couldn’t have started any better. We kicked a goal within 30 seconds and then another two, so that’s three goals in five minutes at the start of the last quarter, and one man kicked all 3 goals.”
“Jesse Monaghan was unbelievable. Just single-handedly he took the game by the scruff of the neck and we’ve hit the front and all of a sudden, we’re thinking, geez, we are in real shock here.”
“We just had all the momentum by this stage. Unfortunately, though, after we hit the front, Woden kicked a goal straight away, so 30 seconds later, they’d gone ahead. They’ve got the lead back and then it was a bit of a stalemate for a little while. Then we’ve kicked another goal to take the lead back at about 10 minutes to go.”
“Then with six or seven minutes to go, we’ve kicked another goal, so we’ve gone eight points up. And we’re starting to think this could actually be the one here. But there’s still a bit of time on the clock. We knew Woden would keep coming hard, so couldn’t celebrate too early.”
“Then there’s only a couple of minutes to go, Woden is getting a lot of forward territory, then they are coming at us hard and with one minute on the clock and they got the free kick, they kicked a goal from long range and it was touch and go, whether it was touched on the line, but they called it a goal. I’ve looked at the clock, there’s 30 seconds to go and the clock just keeps running after a goal. So I’ve looked at the clock, 30 seconds to go, I knew we’d won because they didn’t have time to get the ball back to the centre.
“The emotion just starts releasing and we ran onto the ground a little bit early and they sent us off because they had to check the scores just to make sure, and we’ve won by one point. The most unbelievable feeling and just such an amazing achievement for this club and just so amazing to see so many people so happy after the game. It was just scenes.”
“It’s just such an amazing underdog story. Last year we lost by 120 points.”
“So then we finished 5th on the ladder. I felt like because we had such a young team that we would overtake them at some point, but I was thinking it’s probably two or three years down the track. But to do it this year, it came as a surprise, I didn’t think we were ready yet. But we did come within a point of them earlier in the season.”
“That’s when I thought we are actually a chance here when we’re coming at these guys.”
“I think there’s three key things that won us the match because at times we made a lot of mistakes. So we didn’t get everything right, but three key things that won us the game – Our pressure, we were relentless with our pressure all day; Our tackling was insane; and just our pressure at the Woden players.”
“They were making a lot of mistakes with a lot of our kicks because our pressure was so good.”
“Secondly, our discipline, our discipline was outstanding, and I think Woden, they play a pretty physical brand of footy, but our guys just held their nerve and were really disciplined, didn’t give away any silly free kicks. That was really important.
“The third thing was our goal kicking accuracy. We were very wayward in our first final against ADFA and lost that final.”
“The last two weeks against ANU and Woden, we really took our opportunities and kicked straight when we needed to, and Woden will be rueing those missed opportunities at the first quarter, that’s when they cost themselves the game.”
“We just held our nerve in front of goals and it went our way. It was just amazing.”
“Presentation night is the 10th of October. We are really looking forward to that night and that’ll be a big celebration. That will be good fun.”
“The boys had a good Saturday night celebrating at the Clubhouse Hotel, one of our big sponsors.”
The Roos aren’t looking at entertaining a move up in divisions.
“It’s interesting that Batemans Bay went up to the top division. We definitely won’t be doing that.
The amazing thing is that I think we are the first one team club to win the premiership. Teams like Woden, ADFA, ANU who dominate this competition, they’ve got two teams.
“They have got firsts and reserves and they’ve got 80 players on their books. And we’re just this little team of 30 players with no reserve grade. So to do it, obviously with that situation, under those circumstances, it’s just absolutely amazing for this club to pull this off.”
“We are the first one team club and we’re also the first New South Wales club to win this competition.
“It is pretty amazing and we’ll definitely stay in this division and hopefully, we can build our numbers up and it’d be great if we can have two teams one day, but there’s not a big population of AFL players in Yass, so we rely on a lot of support from Canberra.”
“It is a bit tough getting guys to train out at Yass, but hopefully we will find a way over the next few years to keep building those numbers up.”
As for who will coach next year, that is to be determined.
“We haven’t thought about that one at all. We are just enjoying the premiership. I will talk with the club when the dust is settled and everything and start planning for next year, but it’s great and I’m just enjoying it.”
“I’m so proud of the boys, they just gave it absolutely everything on Saturday and it is just a credit to them, just the way they went about it, playing footy in the right way in the spirit of the game and there’s so many really good mates in that team as well, and to bring so much happiness to so many people, including myself, I’ve lost four grand finals as a player and four grand finals as the coach. I’m just so happy and just so thankful for those boys and the efforts of those young men, it was just incredible.”
“Regan Sweeting’s boots just broke apart. So he’s come off the field and I’m just feeling sick looking at this because it’s not easy to find a good pair of boots straight away to replace them.”
“I’ve never seen this before, especially in an important game like this where your boots just fall apart. So there’s just a mad panic and I’m going we have got to find ‘Rooster’ a new pair of boots.”
“This just sends chills down my spine this story. Our co-captain Sam, who had missed the game through injury, he was standing there, he goes, what size are you? And he’s 10.5 and Sam goes, geez, I’m 10.5 too, and he said my boots are in the sheds, I will go grab them. So he bought his boots and they fit, they weren’t perfect, but they fit. ‘Rooster’s’ gone back out and played an amazing game. But it’s so funny how things fall into place.
If Sam had of been playing, he would have been out there with the boots, obviously. And ‘Rooster’ may not have gone back on and he played a crucial role in the game.
“We were all so devastated for Sam as he was on the sideline not being able to play, but he has played a crucial role with those boots and just being there inspired the boys as well.
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