YARRAWONGA earned another shot at Lavington with a pulsating five-point win over Wodonga Raiders in Sunday’s first semi-final at John Foord Oval.
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It will be the third straight season the sides have met in the preliminary final after the Pigeons held on for a 10.10 (70) to 10.5 (65) victory against the defiant Raiders.
Marcus McMillan took his place in the Yarrawonga line-up just a week after suffering what appeared a serious calf injury against the Panthers and was among the Pigeons’ best players despite finishing the day with 0.5
The result leaves the door ajar for Craig Ednie (calf) and Nick Lawless (knee) to play against this season although Pigeons co-coach Chris Kennedy said the pair remained “doubtful”.
With Ednie, Lawless and Tim Cooper (AC joint) sidelined, Kennedy put the heat on the Pigeons’ nine premiership players to stand up against the Raiders a week after being humiliated by 11 goals.
Xavier Leslie, Tyler Bonat and Matt Gorman answered the call.
Bonat ran hard all day to finish with two goals, Gorman dominated the clearances and when Leslie wasn’t winning the ball in heavy traffic, he was cutting the Raiders off across half-back.
Bronson Schofield and Logan Morey took the honours against Steve Jolliffe and Jydon Neagle respectively although the Raiders pair played important roles in their final term surge and could have snatched an unlikely victory after trailing by four goals for much of the match.
Kennedy was proud of how the Pigeons responded from the qualifying final belting by Lavington and was confident of a better performance against the Panthers in next Sunday’s preliminary final at Norm Minns Oval.
“We definitely need to improve and obviously Tyler Bonat will make a difference in that engine room,” he said.
“We didn’t think we brought a finals game last weekend against Lavington and we spoke about that all through the week.
“I really put in on the premiership players to show those younger guys how hard finals are to win.
“I thought the senior guys led and then the kids followed today.
“I thought a lot of our match-ups worked.
“Today was a hard enough game but it was more of a running game rather than a hard-hitting one and I think we’ll recover fairly well from that.
“Hopefully Lavington are pretty sore after yesterday’s game against Albury.”
The Panthers took it right up to Albury for three quarters of Saturday’s second semi-final but faded to lose by 28 points.
- More Ovens and Murray reports: P36-37
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