Werribee Centrals have avoided becoming the third consecutive qualifying final loser to exit the GDFNL premiership race in straight sets after seeing off the Belmont Lions in the first semi-final by 67 points.
The Centurions used dominant second- and fourth-quarter efforts to steamroll the Lions, 17.12 (114) to 7.2 (44) at St Albans Reserve.
They will now face Winchelsea in Saturday’s preliminary final, with the winner to face East Geelong in the following week’s grand final.
“There’s no illusion that there was a bit of pressure on,” Centrals coach Rhyce Prismall said.
“I tried to take a lot of that heat as a coaching group rather than the players and try and get them in a mindset of just feeling good about themselves.
“It was a bit of a challenge, especially Tuesday’s training. You could definitely see that the boys were hurting, and I suppose that’s the job of a coaching group; you’ve got to get your players in the right mental state.
“But pre-game, you could see they were hungry. We had the system in place that we thought could get the job done against Belmont.
“We’d taken care of them twice this year, so we knew they were going to have some things up their sleeve and change some things also, but our boys just followed instructions.”
Werribee Centrals were slow to get going, trailing by 12 points at quarter time.
However, a stunning nine-goal burst with the aid of the breeze in the second term flipped the contest in the Centurions’ favour, giving them a 34-point halftime buffer.
Despite being kept goalless in the third quarter, the Lions could only manage two goals, leaving them 21 points in arrears.
They were powerless to stop the Centrals’ final-quarter onslaught that netted seven goals.
“To be behind early in the game – I don’t think we had a possession for the first five minutes and everything was going their way -there wasn’t any panic,” Prismall said.
“The boys showed a lot of maturity.
“I was probably a little bit harder on them during the week (in) calling out that we had a few passengers and we’re not going to win a game relying on our best couple.
“So a lot of boys responded. We had a lot of role players, and our bottom six to eight players had good days and just did what they had to do.”
Tate Camilleiri showed the form that earned him GDFNL Team of the Year selection, Tyler Crennan kicked four goals in his best performance since deciding to play midseason, and Paddy Daley was outstanding as he battled Lions duo Jed Evans and Noah Houtsman in the ruck.
If the Lions have a best-in-finals award, Lachie Slorach is certain to win it after another strong effort, while Dylon Johnson and Nick Sherriff also battled hard.
Houtsma kicked two goals for the losers, as did Andy Wylie.
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